The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 8^th day of August, 2006 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 9:00 a.m. by County Council President Lloyd Winnecke.

President Winnecke: Good morning and welcome to our August 8^th meeting of the Vanderburgh County Council, to begin our 2007 budget hearings. We’ll begin with attendance roll call please.

COUNCILMEMBER	PRESENT	ABSENT
Councilmember Tornatta	X
Councilmember Sutton	X
Councilmember Abell	X
Councilmember Goebel	X
Councilmember Raben	X
Councilmember Wortman	X
President Winnecke	X

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

President Winnecke: Before we begin, just a couple of comments, especially for those viewing at home, we will not be voting on any of the requests neither today, tomorrow or on Thursday. We will be hearing the requests from all the officeholders and department heads these next three days, and we’ll spend the next week or so working out what we think is a fair and amicable budget. We’ll come back on August 22^nd to present our cuts or any additions or changes that we see fit to make between now and that time. So, again, there will be no voting this time. We’ll hear the presentations and open it up to Councilmembers for questions. So, having said that, we’ll begin with the individual department budgets.

President Winnecke: First on the agenda today is Weights and Measures, and it’s page 87 in your budget books. Loretta, good morning.

Loretta Townsend: I’m Loretta Townsend from the City of Evansville-Vanderburgh County Weights and Measures Department.

President Winnecke: Your budget is pretty straightforward. Do you mind just kind of walking us through and giving us the highlights of it?

Loretta Townsend: Okay, seven, no, eight line items remained the same for 2007. Let’s see, there are a few pluses in it. On Training, I asked for another hundred dollars, because there’s going to be more and more training. Some of it we are able to get into our office, because we’ve got facilities that they can do it in. So, it helps us a lot on our Travel and our Training, but there are books and these type of things that are involved in it. Let’s see, same, same, Vehicle Repair, yeah, we got a new vehicle this year, but we got two of them that are, well, especially the Ford, we’re having a lot of trouble with the Ford. No matter what we do with the thing, we still get exhaust back into the, an antifreeze smell back into the vehicle. We have a hard time with that one. Of course, the other one is getting old, and we now, as of, until we get billed for something else, we’ve got a total of 260 bucks left in there to make it through the rest of the year, which we have not been billed yet for July. Okay, on Gas and Oil, our only thing that might save us some is that we don’t get billed for December until January, which we’re going to be taking out of next year. But if we have to rob Peter to pay Paul, that’s what we’re going to have to do because we have a total of from $2,100, and our last billing was for June, which we just got in July, we have a total of $800 left, which is not even half the year. Okay, on, let’s see, we asked for $165 more in Dues, no, that’s what we have left. I’m sorry, $150 more in Rent. We pay a total of $5.60 a square foot. The Civic Center, which is, like it or not, is a private corporation, I mean, there’s stockholders and this type of thing, is over $16 a square foot. So, I don’t think we’re doing too bad. We’ve got a thousand foot, we’ve got security for our vehicles, people can walk in and bring scales in to us, which they do very frequently, and this type of thing, but we, he has upped it 160 bucks a year, or $150 a year. So, that’s still one of the cheapest deals in town. I don’t think even your bank could fight that one. Other than that–

Loretta Townsend: Miscellaneous Equipment, we have to buy, which we did this year, every so many years we buy padlocks that we lock up the gas stations with, the gas pumps and this type of thing. Anything that we see that we’re running very low in equipment or supplies or something, we switch over to Miscellaneous Equipment. That’s what you’re probably looking at to cut, aren’t ‘ya?

Councilmember Raben: I tell you what, Mr. President, this is, Loretta always works hard at trying to keep–

Councilmember Raben: –their budget down. I’m looking back, and it does deserve a pat on the back. Since 2003, this budget’s only gone up $30,000. That includes salary increases and insurance increase and what have you. So, I think she does as good a job holding this budget down, in fact, what they do when gas prices are $3.00 a gallon, you kind of realize the importance of somebody out there measuring pumps and making sure when you buy a gallon of gas, you get a gallon of gas.

Loretta Townsend: I’m going to tell you something, you’re talking about a three percent raise, good. They need a three percent raise. But if any of you have got the guts enough to go with my guys and us and see what’s going on out there, where they’re at right now on these gas trucks, a hundred gallons a pop, five, ten gallons on these other things, and you watch the fumes coming up, and you talk about sweating. You have never sweat in your life until you are out there with that. They deserve a lot more than that three percent, but they’re going to settle for three percent, and we appreciate it very much. But at the end of this year, if things go right, we’re going to have some left over, and one of them is going to be in Communications and the other one is going to be in Rent, and we’re going to have a total of thirty cents in each one of them left. That’s how close our budget is. So just keep that in mind.

Councilmember Abell: I’m not questioning that, I just don’t know what Unappropriated Funds, what is that? What do you do with that?

Loretta Townsend: Are you talking about, is it $150? I don’t have an Unappropriated Funds, what we printed out on here. Is it Petty Cash, 150 bucks?

Loretta Townsend: Okay. They call it Unappropriated Funds, it’s Petty Cash, and what we do is everything we have to buy, a lot of our stuff, I mean, I’ll be truthful with you, it’s going to come from Wal-Mart and it’s going to come from the Dollar General Store, and we put, it’s like supplies and this type of thing.

Loretta Townsend: Yeah, they’re calling it something other than what we are, Marsha.

Loretta Townsend: Keep in mind that 45 percent of this, almost half of it’s going to come from the city.

Z. Tuley: Thank you for the appropriation for the Chief Deputy slot, which I filled. They will start promptly August 21^st. I look forward to the training going on. I thank you for the opportunity to go ahead and start that training.

President Winnecke: Z., if you could begin just with the line items that are beyond the personnel line items that represent an increase over this year. If you could start with those. Just provide a brief explanation. I know you have in the rationale book. We would just like to hear it for the record.

Z. Tuley: I didn’t increase anything, except for one thing. Everything that is listed here, I believe, that I left it as the same that was allowed by the Council last year. So far it’s working out and it hasn’t hurt so bad. I think I did have a slight contractual problem because of the increase from Xerox that I didn’t anticipate. So, I think that that might be the only thing that I increased, except for the Extra Help. Every year I come before you, and every year I ask for part time help. I don’t think that it’s a stretch for anyone to realize that when you send out over 100,000 tax bills that your office is going to be bombarded with phone calls, questions, problems, “I didn’t get my bill”. The bills come back. We had probably 15 trays of returned mail because the taxpayer doesn’t keep up their current mailing address with the Auditor. I thought we did an excellent job this year trying to get them back out, but it is a killer. We work long hours and had a great deal of overtime. I should have brought that figure with me, but I didn’t, but I can get that to you so that Sandie can get that in your packet for review. Besides preparing to get the bills out and the overtime that we spend there, we have to turn around and get those bills back out, even though it’s the taxpayers responsibility to make sure that their current address is on file. It doesn’t do any good to have the actual original bill sitting in my office, because if they don’t have it, they probably won’t pay it. We do hit the media hard. Tom did a great story on how much mail that was returned. The article was very effective, because Bill Fluty’s office was then flooded with phone calls and address changes. Did you set a record number this year, Bill?

Z. Tuley: We believe it’s close. So the article was very effective. So the volume of people that need assistance, and the phone calls and questions are not always things that they can find. It’s not that they’re missing information necessarily that they can’t find on the Internet, it’s what do they do if? We get a lot of the, “What do I do if I lost my exemptions?”, “What do I do if I just turned 65?, “What do I do if I didn’t get my bill?”. We get an awful lot of those phone calls. When you send out over 100,000 tax bills, and you’ve just got this short, little window of collection, you’re bombarded all at once, and then it’s almost like it all goes away. I do feel the absolute need to have part time help during that two weeks, at least, prior to the May 10 deadline, I would prefer four, and I need the same again in November. Because of the volume that comes in, we have the same scenario. You’ve got everybody crunching to pay at the last minute, and we’ve just got that much workload.

President Winnecke: So, what would your plan be for two weeks? Hire how many people to reduce the burden on the staff?

Z. Tuley: I think that we would start with one. Since I haven’t had any, except for the one year that we were in reassessment, one person made a significant difference. We didn’t train them to answer questions. We did train them to send them to the right person who can answer that question. That seemed to work real well. Then, in my office, there is a line for those who don’t have questions, that just want to pay, that don’t want to pay on line, or pay at the bank, they want to come down and pay in person. That person kept the traffic flow going. If you have a question, you need to stop here, rather than them getting mixed up in the Cashier line, they get down to the Cashier and they say, “Well, now, I need you to look at this.” See, my Cashier can’t be doing that. That needs to be down at this end, because the Cashier just needs to turn out the guy that’s ready to pay.

President Winnecke: I think if you could provide the Councilmembers with the overtime data that you had referenced earlier, if you can provide that to Mrs. Deig, that would be good for us to have as we begin our deliberations later this week.

Z. Tuley: Computers, oh. Yeah, that’s where it was last year, but, as I understand it, you guys need me to let you know approximately how much it would cost to keep up the pace of....we replace three computers a year, and we keep it in rotation so that it’s not all at once, and we just replace the oldest ones that are....we had two of them crash this year, as Marsha knows, I had to call with an emergency, because we had one that went down right before tax deadline. If I don’t put this in here, you don’t know what I’m needing. So this is, this dollar amount here stands for three computers.

President Winnecke: How did you arrive at these prices, at the pricing of $2,000 per computer?

Z. Tuley: With what the, ACS has let us know what all that we need in the packaging, what all applications that we’re using, and so forth.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, just asking. Do you have any of those questions, just those questions that you get all the time–

Councilmember Tornatta: Uh-huh. I was going to say, that might be an idea to put on your website to have those frequently asked questions. A lot of people do go to websites just to check out that. I know there are going to be some that aren’t going to be able to have the availability to do that, the libraries even have computers that they can get on for free. So, if they were able to do that, that might be just something that we could throw out.

Councilmember Tornatta: The other thing I was going to mention was, has there ever been any thought of cross training between an office that might have a lighter load during that period of time? To cross train and get some help over from another office?

Z. Tuley: That sounds really good on the surface, but in application of doing that, my office has money, and we receive money, and we receive checks. You could probably have something like that as far as the mail goes, but if they’re working in and around my office, they are exposed to money, and security needs to be tight in those quarters. So every time I allow somebody behind my counter, they have to be watched. If you’re having to watch your extra help, then you’re probably not getting your work done. So I think that that would be–

Councilmember Tornatta: So do you have people that come in every year and do this? Or, I guess, I’m trying to understand, are you training these people just for that two week period, or whatever amount of time you’re talking about?

Z. Tuley: I only got to have one part-time help person since I’ve been in office for six years. That one person is willing to come back, given that their schedule would allow it by now. But, yes, that’s what we did with her, and she has an exemplary record. So the trust factor is not an issue.

Councilmember Sutton: Z., you’ve got a pretty hefty mailing cost, or postage line.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, in a lot of what you do, of course, we need you to do what you do, the sending out those bills. I guess, you’ve talked about this in the past with your website and you have relationships with some vendors here locally where tax payments can be made, what is the incentive for someone to utilize some of these other areas of technology that you have through your office so that you don’t have a line stretched down the hallway two times a year?

Z. Tuley: Number one is convenience. If you go on-line, you can do it from your home, and it doesn’t matter if it’s midnight or 8:00 a.m., when regular office hours are not, the offices aren’t open. The other convenience of using the bank is that you don’t have to get out of your vehicle. You can go through the drive-through and pay. I have pushed that and pushed that. For some people it works, and for some people they just refuse to pay elsewhere. They want the receipt and they want to hand deliver it down here, and they want the receipt from me and not the receipt from the bank. Although there is no difference, as far as what makes a receipt legal, and what doesn’t make a receipt legal. Whatever the bank hands you, that is your official receipt. If there is an overpayment or something, you can present that, and it works as if it’s the original receipt from my office, and you can get your refund with that receipt.

Councilmember Sutton: –people, the number of businesses that come in and some individuals that we would have a higher number taking advantage of some of these more efficient ways to pay their taxes. It would seem that there would be a way where–

Councilmember Sutton: I don’t know if it’s just a lack of information maybe on their part.

Councilmember Sutton: If it’s just a lack of information, maybe, on their part–

Councilmember Sutton: –is the reason they’re not taking advantage of it. So when they come in, you know, they specifically have some information. Or even if there were a way to send out some of the bills electronically, rather than using postage. Some may find that that might be something we may take an interest in.

Z. Tuley: If they contact me, I will do that. I will send it to them via e-mail. It was proposed to the legislators that we start looking at that alternative. It got a cold reception, so far, but as technology improves and what have you, and as costs rise, I think that it would become the duty, so to speak, of the Treasurer to encourage our legislators to perhaps look at things differently, so that we can cut costs in that area. Particularly with the form that I have nicknamed COLTS, the Comparison of Levy Tax Statement, that automatically, for the most part, will increase anybody’s mailing costs, because you now have an additional form. The law says that form must be sent to the taxpayer along with the tax bill. There are counties out there that if you are in escrow and an escrow company has requested your bill, they don’t print you one. With the production of the comparison form, you are no longer given that option. It says you will mail the form along with the bill. So with my bills, I have stamped on it, so that the taxpayer is aware that a mortgage company has requested their bill, I have it stamped on there, “duplicate sent to mortgage company”. This doesn’t tell the taxpayer, at all, that their mortgage company is going to pay, it just simply says they asked for a copy and I sent them one. Loans close and loans open all the time, and so it’s worked out for us for those people who did pay off their loan, that they went ahead and had a bill. We do accept those payments, even though it’s stamped duplicate sent, because we know that that’s not a guarantee of payment. But the on-line thing is a good idea, I think. But the convenience of anyone who has asthma, particularly, I know that the farmers just absolutely tear me up in the fall with my allergies, I’m allergic to mold. I have difficulty with allergies in the fall. There are other people that have allergies in the spring. They can get in their vehicle, if they don’t want to use the mail, and they can drive to a number of local banks, whoever has the contract, they have branches everywhere, and they don’t have to get out of their vehicles, and they don’t have to park out front, and they don’t have to come up here. But you will still see taxpayers hauling their oxygen tanks on the second floor to come in and pay because that’s what they want to do. I need to be ready for those. I do encourage everybody to pay at the bank, because one thing, it’s financially productive for us to do this, because if you go to the bank and you paid today, I don’t know that you’ve paid yet. I get a report from the bank electronically the next morning. Because I have an agreement and a contract with the bank that they’re going to sweep whatever’s in the account into an interest bearing, I just earned interest last night on money that I didn’t even know I had. So it is a very financially sound plan. I don’t know how you, you can’t make the taxpayer go to the bank, unless you just close down my office.

Councilmember Sutton: –group of folk who don’t want to take advantage of that.

Z. Tuley: –I’m trying to encourage that. It does take a lot of the burden off. But if they do have questions, they are going to have to call. If they lost their exemptions, then I get them, and Bill gets them both.

Councilmember Goebel: Z, I don’t want to belabor this, we’ve got a lot of business today, but did you...did I misunderstand you, the state legislature is opposed to on- line, electronic billing?

Z. Tuley: They didn’t say that they were opposed, but it got a very cold reception.

Z. Tuley: Yes, because the law says you will mail the COLTS form along with the tax bill to the taxpayer.

Councilmember Goebel: That could be pushed through your organization. Do you know offhand what percentage of people opt to pay their taxes on the debit plan?

Councilmember Goebel: Okay. Not very many. If we could go electronically, it seems like it would save the taxpayers quite a bit of cash, or money.

Z. Tuley: I think the issue there, the debit option plan, which is an excellent plan, but they do have to share their banking information with me. I think that, some of that discourages some of those. It’s getting more popular.

Z. Tuley: Yes, but I have to know their bank, the bank’s routing number and their account number.

Councilmember Goebel: As long as you don’t let that information out, I think we’re okay.

Councilmember Raben: Just real quick, I mean, to me it sounds like we just need to do a bang up job on selling this to the public, and maybe the news media, radio, could all step up and offer some free air space to sell what we have to offer in terms of making these payments.

Z. Tuley: I have had in the past, I do want to say, the taxpayers complain about the lines. I always tell them, it’s not my fault, and you don’t have to be here, and I didn’t have any money for part time help, and I tried to make other means available to you, and some of them just say, “I’m coming here, because you are collecting my tax and you’re going to get me, and you’re going to wait on me.”

Susan Plassmier: Good morning. I’m Susan Plassmier with Purdue Extension here in Vanderburgh County. I’m the county Extension Director.

President Winnecke: Maybe if you could do the same, if you just kind of highlight the areas that are–

Susan Plassmier: Appropriations? Okay. The 1990 account, the Extra Help account, way back in 2002, well, those were all cut out in the county. We lost $6,240 in that account line, and so we’re asking that that be reinstated. That’s the money that we use to help pay for college students in the summer to help run the 4-H program, do workshops, camps, do a lot of coordination. We do a lot of summer outreach at day camps in the community, where we go in and work with kids that are at the day camps. So, that has helped to fund for that. We’ve had to cut back. We’ve been able to use some of the money from the 4-H assistant line item, but we have had to cut back on the number of students that we use. They help coordinate things with the fair, too. The Office Supplies, we’re asking for an additional $500 in that line item, costs are just increasing. Travel/Mileage, again, costs are increasing. Actually, the county appropriated where we could get more mileage per, more money per mileage, but yet our mileage account never increased. So we’re just asking for a $500 increase to help offset with that. Utilities, asking for $1,000 for that because of the increase of gas and electricity, just like we have at home, we also have at work. 3530, that’s our Contractual Service line item. That’s, I think, our big one this year. We’re asking for $5,000 in that. That is money that goes to Purdue University to pay, help pay for extension educators here in Vanderburgh County, of which we have three. These are people with Masters degrees that do programming within the community. Purdue pays 70 percent of that, the salaries. It includes salaries, benefits, training, and the county picks up, is paying about 30 percent of that cost. So Purdue, back in 2004 said we’re, by the year 2007 every county was asking for them to appropriate an additional $5,000, and I’ve been telling you every year since then that this was coming in 2007. Every year I put a little extra in the budget, saying if you want to go ahead and put some in there now, rather than being hit with it all at once in 2007, you can, but we always just got what we needed. So, this is the year that we’re being hit with that $5,000 increase. Back in 1982, Purdue came up with a formula that designated how each county, how much they would pay, and that has not changed since 1982. We’ve had every year like the two percent cost of living increase, but nothing else. So, this is the year that that’s being asked to change. Then also, in 4220, the Office Machine line item, you took $1,000 out of that last year, and we’re asking that $1,000 be put back in there to give us a total of $2,000 in that line item.

Susan Plassmier: When we’ve had to buy equipment, and we may, we don’t always have something each year. Last year we bought a laminating machine. So, we had some money that we hadn’t used the previous year that we were able to carry over and, you know, you said to pay for things like that, more high cost things. You know, we don’t use it every year. But, it’s nice to know that. I will say, you know, Loretta talked about how their budget had only gone up $30,000, our budget has only increased $13,000 since the year 2002, so we don’t ask for a lot of money. We don’t have a lot of fluff in our budget. Pretty well what we get, we spend, and if we don’t, we turn it back.

Susan Plassmier: That is, we have a service, or a contract with Purdue, that pays for leasing computers. That’s a flat amount every year of what our county, it pays for eight computers, a printer and then the service to that, you know, we’re on-line with them. So if we have a problem with our computer system, they can go, just at Purdue can go in, up there with their little magic, and fix it. So, and that, if there’s anything that we need to send out, or if anything needs to be repaired, then that includes that cost in there.

Councilmember Wortman: I think in this program here that they do with the kids is really important, I think. That keeps kids off the street, too.

Councilmember Sutton: Line item 3120, Postage and Freight, is that primarily the mailings with your newsletters and updates and flyers, that type of thing?

Councilmember Sutton: Okay, any other things that you have in there that attribute to that $9,500 request? It’s almost the same, along the same lines as what I had with the Treasurer when she was up. Just trying to find some ways to be a little bit more efficient. I mean, since a lot of the audience that you’re touching base with are either students or on-line, is there a way that we can even look at, I know you guys have probably talked about it, but look at maybe becoming a little bit more efficient with using, putting the newsletters and things on-line?

Councilmember Sutton: And reducing some of that Postage cost. So, I don’t know if that’s just that exclusively, if you’ve got something else in there, I would like to hear it.

Councilmember Sutton: In our book it’s 31...I don’t know if you have a different numbering system, it’s 3120.

Susan Plassmier: Okay, that line item didn’t increase. Did I say it was increasing?

Susan Plassmier: Okay. We send out bulk mail, when we send out newsletters. You know, a lot of what we send out, we get a lot of people calling our office requesting information versus, this time of the year I get a lot of calls about canning and freezing. So if they have a computer, I can tell them, you know, you can access this publication by going on-line, but a lot of our clientele don’t have access to that. So when you’re getting in some technical information, you need to mail them. The same thing, we get a lot, Larry Caplan, who’s our Horticulture Educator, gets a huge amount of calls where he sends out information, publications, mailings to people dealing with pests, problems, fruit, I mean, just diseases and things like that. Again, I mean, if he has it on-line and they have a computer, he will just send that, forward that to them. But, it doesn’t always happen. Actually, even with our postage and our bulk mail, we send out, a group that I work with, Extension Homemakers, they pay their own bulk mail permit, as well as the 4-H organization. I mean, that doesn’t come out of our county money. They pay for the permit for that themselves, their organizations.

Councilmember Sutton: About some ways that you could maybe look at streamlining.

Councilmember Tornatta: Can you just explain how many kids are affected if you don’t have the Extra Help money? It’s kind of used in a different capacity. Where sometimes we see some government office use it for bringing in some extra employees, in this case you have summer programs, I believe, like I didn’t see my basketball camp, so I knew there was a cut somewhere. But can you explain how many kids are affected, and just a little bit about what they do?

Susan Plassmier: Okay, we, to be quite honest with you, I do not know the number of kids that we work with at day camps. We go to probably ten different day camps. Like we go to USI day camp, we go to Camp Reveal’s day camp, different churches, Good Shepherd has day camps, and they go there weekly and do programs with kids, basically kids that are 4-H age, because we kind of want to use it also as a promotion tool for 4-H, go and do different programming. This year, Purdue, we’ve had a lot of training on, you know, 40 hour work weeks, so, that may be why they were unable to come to your camp, because we really even had to watch that really closely with the fair, to make sure they did not go over that 40 hour limit. Which, in the past, it’s kind of not been so much of an issue. We’re looking, watching that much more closely, and we had to juggle the office schedule, the fair too, so secretaries didn’t go over their 40 hours. Because when you’re at the fair, people expect you to be available to them, you know, 8:00 in the morning until like 9:00, 10:00 at night. If they have questions, they just want to walk into the office to ask questions. So, we, you know, even juggled their hours to try and cover that whole time frame. We probably work with, I mean, 1,500 students or children in the summer, or more. That’s not counting our traditional 4-H--

Councilmember Tornatta: What about the ones that are employed? I mean, that are actually employed, how many kids are actually employed?

President Winnecke: County Clerk, page one in your handbooks. Good morning, Susie.

President Winnecke: Same routine, if you could start with the requests that are over and above 2006 funding levels, please.

Susan Kirk: Well, to start with, the salaries, as I had explained to you last year, I went before Job Study, and I’m just trying to get my staff salaries comparable to other staff members within the Civic Center, other offices who do similar work. As far as, I think, Office Supplies we stayed the same, the only one that really raises is our Storage of Records, which has been a slight problem. Needless to say, every year there are more cases filed through the court system. Which obviously means more storage. The more litigious everything becomes, the more papers each case has. So storage has been a problem, ongoing, and, I mean, Marsha can attest to this. Secondly, there was a company, it was a Phoenix and Pulse that was doing, Phoenix did the microfilming of records, and Pulse did the scanning of records. But, as it turns out, and I know this was ongoing with Marsha, because I’d seen some notes on it, the records that they were scanning are not even vaguely acceptable to the state. So therefore, we can’t destroy records, because the scanning that was done is below par. I spoke with Mr. Bob Like, who has the company, Pulse, and worked with him for a year on them trying to correct the errors and it was a mess. Anyway, they just couldn’t seem to get it corrected. It got so bad, at one point we were missing some order books, and one of the employees at Pulse literally broke the lock on the door at Kinder, I guess, in the middle of the night, and put those three order books in there. So anyway, I ceased using Pulse because, well, it was just a mess. So anyway, we do now have Kinder, who we’ve had John Newman down from the state, and he went out there, we had everything checked, and Kinder is, you know, their scanning is great, they like it. So we are beginning to try to get that taken care of, so that in the future we can destroy some records. So I know you guys always kind of cut us a little bit there, for Record Storage. We’ll just, we’ll be back for more money.

President Winnecke: If you could hold that thought, we’re going to change the tape.

Councilmember Tornatta: Susie, a couple of questions. If I’m looking at this in the IV-D we think we’ll pay $125,000 towards storage of documents? Is that what is anticipated?

Susie Kirk: Well, we can only take a percentage off of that. We’re taking as much as we can to help with storage costs out of the IV-D money.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, well I understand, but I mean the total we’re looking at is $125,000 for one year?

Susie Kirk: See, what the...well, let me find it here. You jumped one on me. I was still in the Clerk’s Office.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, I’m looking at a line up above in Office Supplies, so we’re talking $95,000?

Susie Kirk: You have to remember, IV-D, because the state has taken over so much, the IV-D money is going down some. Now grant you, we were kind of on a down slide there for a while, but between the Prosecutor’s Office and my Child Support Office, they’ve kind of gotten together and we’re doing a little bit better now. Some other things that we’re doing to try to, you know, get more IV-D money to help us with anything that, you know, office supplies, storage, record storage.

Councilmember Tornatta: Plus they need...the IV-D might need a couple thousand dollars worth of furniture and then they pass theirs on to the Clerk’s Office.

Councilmember Tornatta: I was just saying that the IV-D account could probably use the $1,000 worth of furniture that they would gladly pass theirs over to the Clerk’s department.

Susie Kirk: The only thing that we did as far as furniture goes, the girls...their chairs...well, they were pathetic and we did use some of the IV-D money to compensate for that. The reason we can do that is because bookkeeping, the girls that work at the front counter, you know, they are taking things in that concern IV-D money.

Councilmember Tornatta: I understand, but I am just saying that probably one could put the $1,000 Furniture line in the IV-D account and then pass their furniture on in the other account.

Councilmember Tornatta: But they would have to use that furniture if that was a passing over. I think you were talking about chairs.

Susie Kirk: I thought everybody had a chair that needed one and apparently I didn’t. I emailed everybody and said, what about your chair? I tried to...people with back trouble, to get their chairs ergonomically correct and things like that, and there were just a few of them that we didn’t get. Now grant you, these people are not going to fall out of their chair, they’re not that bad, but we did that last year and to do that again this year with IV-D money, I think would be maybe going over the edge a little bit and I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize what money we get from IV-D so that $1,000 for furniture would just be to finish out for those other girls that did not get a new chair. And these chairs they’re like, you know, they’re not expensive. We’re not buying big fancy plush chairs, but that is what that is for. Like I said, we did that last year so I feel uncomfortable doing it again, turning that into IV-D money this year.

Susie Kirk: Those spots that have anything to do with IV-D money got their stuff last year.

Councilmember Goebel: In line 3540 Maintenance Contract, could you just briefly explain what that is for?

Susie Kirk: The maintenance contracts are for the printers that we have over there. I mean, the copiers that we have over there. We’ve got lots of copiers, needless to say. Big, I mean, it’s big. Big copy machines. So there is one down in Misdemeanor and Traffic. There is one, of course, in the Clerk’s Office, two in the Clerk’s Office, that we have to have maintenance agreements on because if we don’t...a maintenance agreement actually ends up being cheaper for us in the long run than doing it the other way because we can run so many more copies and it’s so much cheaper.

Susie Kirk: Uh, I believe, what did I put down, Teri? Have you got that? I didn’t bring that over here. I know it goes down. It’s been going down. Like I said, we’re hoping to raise that up just a little bit. I don’t...maybe Teri, I didn’t bring that over here with me. Sorry to put you on the spot, Teri.

Teri Lukeman: You projected $70,000 for the remainder of this year and $100,000 for next year.

Teri Lukeman: I’m sorry. Seventy thousand for the remainder of this year and $100,000 was projected for next year in IV-D.

Susie Kirk: And that may be a little on the low side. Like I said, we’ve tried to do some things to even collect, you know, try to get back up a little bit. Like I said, it’s very difficult to do because the state is basically assuming the role of child support. The checks are...they all go to the state first. We don’t even get them. We’re getting walk-ins, you know, if it’s a very small company, less than 50 people, and you know maybe there are a couple of gentlemen or ladies that are paying child support they can still pay through our office, but for the most part everything is electronically done. Their wages are, you know, it’s withdrawn right out of their wages and it goes right to the state and the state gives us a report. So they take away more of our work. As a matter of fact, we’ll probably be moving one of the employees maybe in the next couple of years out of Child Support and into Misdemeanor and Traffic.

President Winnecke: Other questions of the Clerk? Thank you, Susie, we’ll see you in a couple of weeks.

Susie Kirk: That is pretty well self-explanatory. We didn’t raise...that’s pretty well the same other than obviously, the Council was kind enough to give our poll workers a little bit more money to get us up with, you know, the rest of the people in the state that pay their poll workers. I am going to get with the County Commissioners. We are going to redo the contract with ES & S for the iVotronics. There are some things that we have found that we can save on and we’re talking, you know, $50,000 or $60,000 that we’ll be able to save on that.

Councilmember Sutton: On that Contractual Services, one more time just to make sure I’m real clear on that. What...that’s iVotronics exclusively?

Susie Kirk: The Contractual Services on the Election Office budget is for Kinder Moving & Storage and we’re going to use them because we did the bids last time and everybody was, other than Kinder Moving & Storage, they were twice the amount. That is for them to transport the iVotronics to the polling place on Monday, the day before the election, and they pick them up on Wednesday and bring them back to the office. I tell you guys, if you want to see something impressive you need to come down and see that. I have never seen anything so organized in my life as how he has got that set up. They come in....well, it sounds like thunder in the hallways the way they come in and pick up those machines, get them out, get them delivered, get them picked up. They do a wonderful job, but that is all that is used for is to transport the iVotronics back and forth. That’s it.

Councilmember Sutton: How long is...what’s the length of this contract that we have with Kinder for that particular service there?

Councilmember Sutton: Okay. Now since it’s going to be a city election next year, I mean, is this in line with what the cost was when planning for this year or is this...we’re going to have a small election next year.

Susie Kirk: Well, this is the reason that I left it the same. As we all know, gas prices are going up. I don’t know what Kinder...the bid is going to be next year. I hope that even though we’re going to reduce the precincts by maybe 30 and, of course, they don’t have to drive as far out into the county, that this will certainly more than cover it. But like I said, because of the increases in gasoline, I was hesitant to cut that figure back for the 2007 election. Because, like I said, when the bids were sent out, you know, there was Shetler Moving & Storage and I forget, two or three of them, and, my gosh, their bids to transport these iVotronics were like 20,000 some odd dollars and Kinder does it for half that price. So I am just anticipating higher gas prices. So that is why I left it at that figure.

President Winnecke: Prosecutors Office. So everyone knows, we’ll get through the Prosecutor’s budget and then we’ll take a brief recess so we can relax.

Stan Levco: I think so. My name is Stan Levco, I’m the Prosecuting Attorney. Shall I tell you the differences in our budget from last year to this year?

Stan Levco: Okay. There are just a few. One is I’m asking on payroll on a Deputy Prosecutor who is my filing deputy. Earlier this year in April, his salary was increased $7,200 and that was because he had been unclassified a few years ago to give him a raise, and over the years with the three percent raises, he would end up getting paid less than what he would have gotten had he been classified.

Stan Levco: In any event, when I came here, I agreed that for the rest of the year that I would pay the difference out of Infraction Funds and I said I would be requesting that it be paid out of the General Fund next year. You did not agree that you would pay it out of the General Fund next year, you just agreed that I would come back and make that request and that is the request I am making. I am also asking for two additional IV-D Enforcement Officers. There is a major increased request in the drug budget that I am asking for and also an additional on two matching grants, Domestic Violence and Witness Assistance. It has been increased only because their grants, their match stays the same and the salary and the insurance goes up. I have Mr. Brown who is going to talk about the IV-D Enforcement Agents and Dan Miller is head of the drug program and he can talk about the drug increase if you would like.

Councilmember Raben: I understand we are not addressing salary issues today, but there is one that is pretty substantial.

Councilmember Raben: 1240-1080, which is Chief Criminal Investigator. Yeah, it’s about a $19,000 increase. Just under $19,000.

Councilmember Raben: Is this a different employee in this than what was in it last year? Okay.

Stan Levco: It will be a different Chief Investigator who had more years of service.

Councilmember Raben: Then I guess is there a line somewhere that reflects a lesser amount that makes up for that?

Councilmember Sutton: What was the accompanying adjustment? I didn’t catch that?

President Winnecke: If I can make one comment just real quickly. I am having also trouble hearing people, so if you could make an effort to speak more into the microphone I think it would help all of us. Okay, let’s go to IV-D, please.

Doug Brown: Doug Brown, Prosecutor’s Office. I’m just going to make a very brief pitch why we do need two new employees, Enforcement Agents in IV-D. These agents are reimbursed two-thirds by the state, as you know. Essentially, to make it real simple, if we had two more employees, then we would be collecting more child support. I’m going to compare some of the similar sized counties to us and currently in Vanderburgh County we have 15,400 cases with 15 administrative staff. That’s 1,000 cases per person. In Elkhart they have approximately 10,000 cases with 19 employees, 510 per person. St. Joseph, they have 19,500 cases with 35 employees, that’s 560 per person. In Allen County they have 25,400 current cases with 31 employees and that is 820 per person. I’ll show you our collections. In 2005, Vanderburgh County collected $14,290,000. That is $950,000 per agent. Elkhart collected $769,000 per agent. St. Joseph, they collected $665,000 per agent. Allen County collected just over $1 million per agent. Our agents are working at a very efficient rate collecting a lot of money. For the first six months of 2006, our collections are up ten percent, so essentially we’re collecting $1 million per agent, which is great work. Over the past three years in our program, our collections are up almost 25 percent. There are a lot of reasons for that, but it’s mostly a lot of aggressive programs that have been implemented by our office, our head of Child Support. Things like attaching retirement benefits, attaching insurance settlements, wage withholdings, attaching bank accounts, placing liens on automobiles, using internet locator services to try and track down deadbeat parents who are not paying their child support and also aggressive use of both criminal and civil remedies, contempt proceedings and actually filing felony cases on people who are not paying their child support. The addition of more employees would directly, and I’m going to say almost instantly, benefit. We’ll have more collections, the amount of money we collect will go up immediately. Another reason why we could use this is the United States Congress has just voted to decrease child support funding. That means the funds that are distributed by the state to the local agencies will be cut in direct relation to how they perform in specific areas. We need these additional employees so that we can do well in these areas to make sure we continue to get that two-thirds from the state. If we were really going to try and be as competitive as we could statewide and to help our citizens the most, we would probably ask for four enforcement agents. We realize there are various budgetary constraints. We’re asking for two. I looked back over our requests for the last few years regarding child support. In 2000 or for the budget year 2000, we asked for six Enforcement Agents and we received two. In 2001, we asked for five and received none. In 2002, we asked for five and received no agents. In 2003, we asked for two and we did not receive any agents. We have not asked for any Enforcement Agents in the last three years. So this is...we appreciate your situation, but the cost benefit here is so great. Again, this money that is collected directly benefits the children of Vanderburgh County. Two-thirds of what the salary is paid is reimbursed to the General Fund by the state. I think it is a wise use of your money. It will help us out in the long run and help the children of Vanderburgh County. So, do you have any questions?

Doug Brown: It’s not a grant per se. We’re just asking for two...for the county to fund two new employees, two Enforcement Agents.

Doug Brown: It has been going on as long as I have been here. We’ve always had that two-thirds reimbursement. I can’t predict the future, but as I said, Congress has voted to cut down on some child support benefits. The areas that they are going to measure how funds are distributed are paternity establishment, order establishment, arrearage collection and basic child support collection and we do quite well in two of those areas. We lag behind in a couple of the others. The areas we lag behind in are directly in proportion to our lack of employees. You can see our employees are performing at as high a rate of almost anybody in the state.

Councilmember Abell: Mr. Brown, what is the percentage...I see how much you have collected, what is the percentage that you have collected that is still left to be collected?

Councilmember Abell: For instance, when you compare yourself to the other counties, it could be that those other counties have collected 100 percent and their 100 percent is less than our outstanding. Do you know how much outstanding we have?

Doug Brown: I could not tell you. I could tell you as far as arrearage, as far as just general child support collection, which one are you asking or are you asking both?

Doug Brown: I can give you a percentage-wise, I think as far as general collections I think we’re at 44 percent of everything we could collect. On arrearage, I can check. I can provide you these exact numbers before the day is out if you need them.

Councilmember Abell: I don’t by the time the day is out, but I would like to have them by the time that we finalize the budget.

President Winnecke: If you could give those to Mrs. Deig and she’ll distribute them to everyone. Excuse me, go ahead.

Councilmember Abell: Where is your standing in the state as far as your rating on child support collections?

Councilmember Abell: Well, not to beat on you, but you were second from the end a couple of years ago. Where are you now?

Doug Brown: That was, I think, 2005. I don’t know if they have had a new one come out since then. Again, that is in direct proportion to what we could potentially collect for the entire office, so I think the better way to look at that is what are we collecting per employee, if that make sense to you. I mean, someone could be ranked 30^th and their employees are only collecting $300,000 per employee. If we had more employees, our rating would go up significantly.

Councilmember Abell: Well, I would argue that with you, but that’s fine. Thank you.

President Winnecke: Other questions of Mr. Brown before we move on to the grant? Okay, let’s move on to the grant requests.

Dan Miller: Good morning. My name is Dan Miller and I’m the director of the Drug Law Enforcement Program within the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor’s Office. For over 15 years, our office has received federal funding matched by county funding for three Deputy Prosecutors and one paralegal secretary to handle all the drug cases in the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor’s Office. Last year that number amounted to approximately 906 cases for the entire year. We have been told that, and are fully expecting, that those grant funds are decreasing next year. This year the county match rose to 35 percent. It had previously been 25 percent and we know that next year the county match will have to be 50 percent, in addition to which we have been told to expect 39 percent less funds to be available to even be given out to counties. We are not the only county in Vanderburgh County that receives these federal funds. Several other counties receive them as well and it is quite competitive. We’ve been very successful in applying and receiving these grants in the past and I don’t anticipate that we would not be successful, but we’ve been told that the amount is going to be less and our match will be greater. The Deputy Prosecutors in the drug program are an integral part of the Vanderburgh County Task Force. As drug prosecutors, we’re not just in the courtroom every day prosecuting drug cases. That is our chief function, but we’re also assisting law enforcement through the Task Force and also law enforcement on the street many times all hours of the day and night. In fact, last night I wrote a search warrant at midnight, so the Prosecutor’s staff in the drug program is an integral part in fighting drugs in Vanderburgh County. With respect to a particular scourge in Vanderburgh County and throughout the State of Indiana we have been very active and very successful. In 2002, we had a peak of 121 meth labs in Vanderburgh County. We have, through aggressive law enforcement and prosecution, have managed to reduce that number to just 18 in the first six months of 2006. As you can see, our drug filings remain fairly constant, but we have gone down from a peak of over 1,000 in 2002, last year was 906. We’re on track to at least approach that level again this year. Nevertheless, drugs continue to be a problem for us. If you look at the statistics that we provided you in the first three months of this year, we actually brought more marijuana off the street than last year. That is in part due to two large marijuana drug busts of over 200 pounds each and we’re hoping that is not a regular occurrence in Vanderburgh County, but it is through aggressive law enforcement that we have been able to take that amount of drugs off the street. The Vanderburgh County Prosecutor’s Office assists law enforcement not only by prosecuting the people that they arrest, but also by assisting with the preparation of search warrants and being on call virtually all the time so that legal questions can be answered. We believe that we provide an important service to all the citizens of Vanderburgh County with the drug program and that is the reason we are requesting that the three Deputy Prosecutors and the paralegal secretary that we currently employ to handle over 900 cases in the Prosecutor’s Office be maintained and sustained.

President Winnecke: Anyone like to begin? I’ll start. I mean, what options are there? I mean, if this body decided we could not afford a whatever percent increase it is, it’s a large percent, what are the ramifications in terms of the grant, etc.?

Stan Levco: I think I can probably answer that because that is going to have to be my decision. What clearly is going to have to happen is I’m going to have to lay off at least one person and it looks to me like, you know, right now the obvious thing is to lay somebody off from the drug program which is something I am extremely reluctant to do, but it’s going to mean a cut in staff, I think, with certainty. I don’t see any other way around that.

President Winnecke: Deferral fees that you...that come into your office, what do you project that will be this year?

Stan Levco: For different, you know, various things. But not salaries. Not salaries. I have never used deferral fees for salaries and I don’t expect to.

President Winnecke: Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were reaching for your microphone. Sorry. Okay, we’ll see you in two weeks.

President Winnecke: We’re going to take a brief recess. How about ten minutes?

President Winnecke: Oh, wait, wait, wait. Excuse me. 177, Pre-Trial Diversion. Sorry about that. This is just the basic three percent increase. Is that it? Any questions there for anyone? Thank you. Now we’ll take a ten minute recess and reconvene.

Steve Owens: Good morning. My name is Steve Owens. I am the Chief Public Defender. In terms of items that we’re asking for additional appropriations this year over last year, there are two that I think we can deal with relatively quickly. One is a rent figure, which is the figure that we’ve been provided by the Building Authority and reflects a rental increase that they have told us we will be seeing. The other is a $500 increase in the training account. I think we asked for a $3,500 appropriation as opposed to a $3,000 appropriation. Primarily, that is to absorb some cost where we anticipate we will have to have in 2007 for training people in death penalty litigation so that we have qualified people on staff who are capable of taking those cases if they are filed. The other three requests that have increased, one is on page 89. That is a salary line item which, unfortunately, I always hate to bring this up – its my salary – that figure reflects the 90% that we have talked about at a number of other meetings to bring us to the 90% level that is mandated by the state Public Defender Commission. That’s 90% of the Prosecutor’s current salary. The other item is a Pauper Expense item which is on page 91. Last year, the Council saw fit to zero us out on Pauper Expense. We have absorbed those expenses this year out of the Supplemental Public Defender account. To the extent that we’ve asked for additional appropriations, its two-fold, one is we are currently paying a number of civil type representation out of the juvenile court from that account, and that is an item that may change in the future, and actually may change before the 2006 budget year, however, at this point, I’m not prepared to say we definitely are going to be able to ask for a reduced amount. The second factor that mandates that we ask for some money is that we currently have a death penalty case within our office. We have not asked for any additional appropriations to fund that. We are able presently to fund that out of the Supplemental Public Defender account, which comes from bonds and not the General Fund. I don’t know how long we will be able to do that. The average cost of the litigation for defense on a trial on a death penalty case is running about a quarter of a million dollars. I anticipate we are going to see the bulk of those expenses in 2007, although I don’t know, we don’t have a trial date at this time, I don’t believe. And so that’s why we are asking for that. The final increase is in a, its on page 90. It is a salary line item. The individual who is holding that salaried position at the present time is a full-time deputy public defender. I think if you’ll note, we are one of the few offices in this county who has no Chief Deputy, who has no assistant or a person who basically is going to help run the office in the event that the officeholder or the elected official is gone. This person handles roughly double the cases of our part-timers. And if you look at the part-time salaries for felony public defenders, you’re going to find that for calendar year 2007, those folks are going to be making, assuming a 3% increase, about $39,000. For that $39,000, they’re going to handle somewhere between 75 and 80 new felony cases on a year, in a calendar year. The person who I’m asking for the increase is handling double that. He’s handling roughly 150 to 160 new felony cases a year yet he’s not making, obviously, double the money. One of the things that he is assisting me with is developing in-house training programs. I would like to use him as almost a quasi Chief Deputy. The difficulty is, if we call this person a Chief Deputy, we run into the same problem with the Public Defender Commission, that we have with my current salary. That is, the Commission mandates that he make 90% of the salary level of the Chief Deputy Prosecutor, which is Mr. Brown. I think for 2007, I’ve calculated that’s going to be somewhere around $87,000 for him to make 90%. What we are proposing is that his salary be increased to $75,000 for 2007 and I’m proposing to fund that by asking that the Council fund 40% of the difference between what his salary would be with the 3% increase and the 75,000, and I will fund the additional 60% out of the Supplemental Public Defender account.

Councilmember Raben: Real quick, Steve, the Deputy Prosecutor in the Prosecutor’s Office , the requested salary this year would be $73,816.

Steve Owens: He gets paid, the Chief Deputy Prosecutor in the Prosecutor’s Office gets paid by the state. His salary from the state, Mr. Brown’s salary from the state is 75% of Mr. Levco’s salary. My understanding is, he gets a supplement. So the person, I think the line item you’re looking at isn’t within the General budget.

Councilmember Sutton: Mr. Owens, the Supplemental Public Defender account, I know the revenue amounts change each year, but approximately how much is that taking in each year in revenue?

Steve Owens: It fluctuates. Its probably $100,000 a year. It goes up and down depending upon the amount of bond forfeitures that are granted by the Circuit and Superior Court judges.

Councilmember Sutton: And how did you say that that is typically used in your office with that account?

Steve Owens: Historically, that’s been used to supplement the Public Defender staff. We have, in any given year, more cases assigned to our office than what our salaried part-time public defenders can handle. That requires us to hire outside counsel on an hourly basis and we use that account to pay for those hourly attorneys.

Councilmember Sutton: So the Public Defenders that you have in your office aren’t supplemented with that, its others who are not presently listed in either part-time or full-time?

Steve Owens: Yeah, they would be contract attorneys. I would hire an individual attorney to take a particular case and under the plan that was submitted to the State Public Defender Commission back in 2000, we have to pay them at the rate of $75 per hour. Its not currently used to supplement any salaries of any salaried people.

Councilmember Sutton: And would you say that, are there any other uses that you have besides the supplementing of the salary area? Would other uses might you have?

Steve Owens: We’ll use it to hire investigators if we need it, we use it to hire experts if we need experts in a particular case. It’s a fund that is used to supplement anything that the Council doesn’t normally provide or anything that we’ve spent in excess of the budgeted amount. So there are a number of things that its used for, but primarily, its attorneys, investigators, expert witnesses.

Councilmember Abell: Have you gone before Job Study regarding the change in the status of this particular Deputy?

Steve Owens: No. I understand there is a Job Study Committee – my understanding was there was going to be a Job Study Committee meeting in, I believe, November and that’s what we were going to do with regard to that individual. He’s presently classified, and we were going to ask, assuming that we get this approved, it is to make that an unclassified position.

President Winnecke: Good morning, Brad. Okay, I think we’d ask you to do the same, if you’d just start with the line items that represent an increase over 2006 funding levels.

Brad Ellsworth: Oh, I don’t want to do that. I’ve got about 22 or so that changed, that I have listed here that we did rationales for. I mean, if you want me to try to list those all?

President Winnecke: Let’s just get them all on the record, if you don’t mind.

Brad Ellsworth: Okay, we prepared the budget based on past practice, some future prediction. The Overtime account is used to provide payment, holiday pay, overtime, late runs the Deputies make, court appearances, investigations, and unscheduled manpower requirements. We’ve got Civilian Overtime, we’ve got 50,000 there, provide payment for holiday pay, overtime for unscheduled manpower requirements, that’s with the ten new employees, civilian employees, that came with the new Jail. We’re asking for an increase allowing us to pay two field training deputies for training of new employees. They’re receiving overtime now and we think we can do that cheaper with two additional FTD’s.

Brad Ellsworth: 1540, that’s really a wash. That is when the paper servers, that’s set in, all part-time labor and that’s set in at a base price. So the $5,000 there is to accommodate them to pay when one is off, we can pay somebody else out of that line. 2210, Gas & Oil, that’s, we’ve obviously implemented in the department some policies and procedures trying to conserve gasoline, but with the prices, they are not bought at a stagnant price, so it fluctuates. And obviously, that’s not going in the right direction. Garage & Motors, that’s 2230, basically, to provide work on our fleet as it ages. 2300, Uniforms for newly hired employees. 2600, printing needs, paper, it used to be provided by the Commissioners and now its in our budget. 2610, Copy Machine Supplies, that’s an additional printer and a couple new copiers for the new facility. 2650 is for Canine Corp, increased food and maintenance for the dogs. 2660 Reserves, we still have an active reserve force. We need to keep them up and equipped to train. 2670, an increase in there. That is an increase in lab testing, the supplies and equipment for investigations. Obviously, there’s some changes in there with the huge increase in computer crimes, keeping those guys up to date and equipment needs for them. 2700 Other Supplies, just miscellaneous supplies. 2760 Court Security, there’s an increase in providing the after hours court building security, and the monitoring service there. 3310, Training, that’s pretty apparent that we’re required to train. We have mandatory hours every year and that’s really not enough for what we provide, so we’ve asked for 30,000 there. 3520 Equipment Repairs, its just for various equipment throughout the department. 3540 Maintenance Contracts, service contracts for the agency. Equipment Lease and Rental, 3630, increase in leases. 3700, Dues & Subscriptions, provide for the updated manuals and current publications. 3920 Youth Development, that goes in to help supplement the DARE program. 4230, Motor Vehicles, we’re asking to replace approximately ten vehicles this year. And 4250, under Miscellaneous Equipment, that again, is to use for miscellaneous equipment throughout the department. And Vehicle Equipment, 4290, that’s to put the light bars, radios, sirens, and the equipment on the vehicle once they come in.

President Winnecke: Let’s stop there and ask if there are questions or comments. Mr. Goebel?

Councilmember Goebel: Sheriff Ellsworth, line 3700, right at the end of your explanation, I think we had printed $1,000 requested, and you – I think the rationale calls for $2,500?

Councilmember Goebel: And I believe, also, line 3920 right below that, $1,000? Thank you.

Brad Ellsworth: Okay, in the Jail, the Jail Expense, as you know, I think over the last two years the Council has put that at zero. We’re asking for $100,000 to be placed in there. We’re trying to keep that up with the Commissary account. It makes it extremely difficult. We fund a lot of things out of there as you all know since we provide that quarterly report out of the Commissary, so we’d ask to put that back in your budget. We intend to continue to supplement that with Commissary, but we don’t think that should be strictly up to the Commissary account. Jail Medical, really nothing mysterious about that, continues to have to provide medical services to the inmates in custody. This is based on, again, past practice and what we predict will take to get us through the year. 2250 Inmate Assistance, that’s providing inmates who come in originally to the facility and then never receive any money from their family, we provide toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo, and soap for them to use. 2260 Food, the meal rate, I think everybody is aware is $1.12-½ cents per meal. As you probably know, a lot of times toward the end of the year we have to pay off the last couple of months for the next year. This number reflects what we predict it will take us to get through the entire year while paying off some of this year’s bills. Uniforms, 2300, self-explanatory, any new Deputies, we have to provide the uniforms and equipment. 2600 Office Supplies, again, previously in the Commissioners budget, now in ours. Training for the Jail staff, $10,000. I believe its important to train them in the various amounts. Its also mandatory to send them to the police academy for a week of training. We do more above and beyond that, also. And then 3520 Equipment Repair is $15,000, in basic repair for the items in the Jail.

President Winnecke: And what all is in Contractual Services? Is that medical and the dentist, doctor?

President Winnecke: That was 3530. Other questions of the Sheriff on the Jail budget?

Councilmember Sutton: 2240 Medical. We’ve got a pretty large increase there over what we’ve even trended and what we’re spending this year. What’s the intent there?

Brad Ellsworth: Some of that’s going to be covered, again, probably what’s going to happen at the end of this year, and also, it’s hard to anticipate, Councilman, what’s going to go on. You know, we’ve seen these instances in the past where we’re forced to take on their expenses when someone is arrested. Or if they’re injured while they’re in there or if they do something themselves to cause their own injury. And so this is basically an estimation of what we think it will take.

Councilmember Raben: Brad, with the new medical facility that we have within the facility, what percentage, used to be, the doctor would look at them or the nurse in the old facility and treat them if possible. But, has it reduced by any certain percentage, the amount of runs that you actually have to make to a hospital or a medical facility?

Brad Ellsworth: We think it will. We think it will. It really hasn’t reduced in the medical yet, the number of runs, because the same doctors are coming out and doing their business. If they think that’s necessary, if something occurs during the night, then basically, the supervisor on duty makes that call whether to send them if its an emergency to send them to the hospital. So that doesn’t reduce the number of runs. In the medical examiners, the dental will, when we get the dentist to actually come to the facility. Right now, they’re still making runs to the dental facility. They haven’t worked out an agreement to get the dentist out there yet. What we’re waiting on is an x-ray machine and we’re looking into the purchase of that, or the lease/purchase.

President Winnecke: Other questions? Before we move on, I did have one other question back in the Sheriff’s budget, maybe I just didn’t hear it. Back on the – I had a checkmark by it. Excuse me a second. Oh, 1990 Extra Help, did you talk about that?

Brad Ellsworth: I did not, Councilman, I didn’t even see that on here, but –

Brad Ellsworth: We were paying the Sergeants to do the bonds throughout the night in the facility when we took that over from the Clerk’s Office. We switched that. Now its used to pay the bonding clerks down in the Jail to do that same procedure.

President Winnecke: What are we doing now, part-time college students? I think we talked about it.

President Winnecke: That’s what we are doing? That’s what this is? Okay, thank you. Other questions on either the Sheriff’s budget or the Jail budget?

Brad Ellsworth: I wasn’t provided with the document for an increase there. I don’t think that’s increased through the, obviously, through the state grant.

President Winnecke: Right. Any questions there? I think its pretty self-explanatory.

Councilmember Sutton: There is one there on line 1850 Union Overtime, is that part of the contract or –

Brad Ellsworth: It is, Councilman. The Correction Officers, under the contract, have the choice between taking that in pay and taking it in comp time. And that varies throughout the year, whether they chose to do that. So they have the ability to change that. So that would reflect an increase there. And we really don’t have any control over that.

President Winnecke: Okay, Community Corrections, page 99. I just had a question about Union Overtime there, isn’t their Overtime more controllable in Community Corrections than in the department or the Jail?

Brad Ellsworth: It should be. The hours are pretty set depending on if someone calls in sick, the guideline is set out, we have a call list, how they’re supposed to be called in so it depends on, that’s really when that occurs if they have to hold someone over or someone takes a vacation and to fill a slot. So there’s not those late runs as in motor patrol and the things that we don’t know about, but probably what runs that up for us is having to fill a slot for somebody on vacation or someone who calls in sick.

Councilmember Raben: The very first line, Community Service Coordinator, there is a rather large increase there. Do you know what that is?

Brad Ellsworth: Was that the buy-out? A longevity increase for Community Service Coordinator?

Brad Ellsworth: Let me check that. There’s some confusion on – they put a person in there that may have had more time, that decision has been made and we’ll revisit that, if that’s possible?

Brad Ellsworth: I’ll fill the position. The figure they figured in there was for a current employee. That’s who may or may not take that job.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, and fortunately, Mr. President, we don’t have to adjust salaries until September, so we’ve got a little time on this one. That’s fine. Thanks.

Brad Ellsworth: I think they were looking at the highest case scenario. I’ll figure that out before the next two weeks are up.

President Winnecke: Other questions relating to Community Corrections? Okay, we’ll move on.

President Winnecke: 179. Should be no questions there. Any questions or comments? Sheriff, I think you’re done.

Deloris Koch: Deloris Koch, Program Director of the DADS Program. The only increases are salaries and benefits. There is one that is a longevity, the Senior Counselor is a longevity increase for her. I don’t believe there are any additional amounts to any other line items.

Terry Dietsch: Yes. I would like to direct your attention to page 108. And I presume that you would like to have the items where we’re asking for additional money, correct?

Terry Dietsch: That is the Patient/Inmate Care line item, that was transferred by the Commissioners to the court budget. Based upon the infusion of money for 2006, and the amount of money that was had before, and that was convoluted by a portion of a payment that evidently, the Commissioners Office did not make for 2005, that had to be made, the best estimate for fiscal 2007 in that account would be $2,400,000.

Councilmember Sutton: Do you have that account now or will that begin in ‘07, that the –

Councilmember Sutton: Are you guys anticipating the request that you’re going to make this year from us for Patient/Inmate Care?

Terry Dietsch: Well, I think that remains to be seen. What happens the remainder of the year, okay?

Councilmember Sutton: Well, I think you guys would have already received some bills on this up to this point. You haven’t received any?

Councilmember Sutton: The question is related to, you probably couldn’t hear me, related to this year and whether Patient/Inmate Care is in your budget now?

Terry Dietsch: I don’t know the exact amount of billings up to this point, we could find out through the Juvenile Division, but I was told last week sometime that they anticipate with the remaining billing that they’re going to receive, okay, if you factor that in, that is why they may ask to make the request for the amount of money that they requested for 2007.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, I ask that because if this request is for what’s anticipated in ‘07 and plus the arrearage from 2006 –

Terry Dietsch: No, no. my understanding – well, now I, maybe I shouldn’t say that. I’ll find out, Mr. Sutton.

Councilmember Sutton: I mean, we don’t want to get two years behind, I guess that’s really what I’m trying to hear.

Terry Dietsch: And my understanding is, we will not. Okay. That this is going to resolve that issue. But I will check to make certain.

Terry Dietsch: No problem. Are there any other questions on that? Alright. I have two line items that I would like to take up together. One is on page 108, 3520 Equipment Repair and the other is on page 109,...

Terry Dietsch: Yes. Office Machines. And the reason I would like to take them up together is this. You will recall the new courtroom system, we were going to phase in over a number of years and initially, the total cost, I think, was estimated at around $90,000, approximately. That envisioned a total of 11 units. We now have five, okay. Our liaison, Ms. Abell, came over and we went over our budget. And subsequently, on another matter that may impact 2008, the Chairman and the financial officer came over and I apprised them of this also. If we were to buy five units, we could get a discount of 20%. I did some figuring and we asked the vendor to FAX us a proposal. That was done, I went over the figures. And when I checked the 20% discount, I didn’t get the same figure that they did. They were charging $1,114 too much. And we think that probably, if we got five units, we could get those units for probably around $45,000, maybe less. That depends on whether we need things like training. And I’m informed that with the new units, we probably will not need that. That could eliminate another 2%, so we’re talking about a substantial reduction in price if we were to buy five at one time. Now, in addition, the maintenance contract fee is outlandishly high. Its over $1,600 per unit. So you’re talking about between 16 and $17,000 a year. And that is why the figure in 3520 was up to 25,000, rather than the 12,000 that we normally have. But we discussed this thoroughly, and we have come to the conclusion that if we do this, we will not necessarily need a maintenance contract on these units. Now, if you don’t have a maintenance contract, the portal to portal charge for repairs is pretty steep, $179 an hour, portal to portal. However, let’s step three years in advance with a maintenance contract, I don’t think that we can have $50,000 worth of repairs in three years. That just doesn’t make sense, so it’s a good bet to say we don’t need the maintenance contracts. However, we did check again to make certain that if indeed we had to have a maintenance contract in the future, we could have a maintenance contract without any kind of penalty. We are going to get back to them again and I am of the opinion that perhaps we can whittle this cost down a bit more. And therefore, in that one line item account, which asks for what, $72,000, I think?

Terry Dietsch: I think we could get by with 50,000. Not only that, but if you couple that with the maintenance equipment repair which actually covers the maintenance contracts plus repairs to things like FAX machines, court stamps, and all of those miscellaneous items, if we reduce that to $12,500, which would not be an increase over what we had before, depending on when we got the new units, we could then get rid of the existing service contracts on the existing equipment and save some more money and perhaps, if we retain just enough to cover the actual repairs that we make to miscellaneous equipment, you know, we might even, depending on when we get the equipment, for example, if we could get it yet this year, and they prorated the existing service contracts, we could get some money back on that. It sounds convoluted, but what I am saying is, if we do this now or if we purchase five at one time with a discount, not having the service contract, not having some of the bells and whistles, not having the training, then we’re going to save a whole bunch of money. And that’s what I’m proposing.

President Winnecke: Could you hold that thought? We’re going to change the tape.

Councilmember Goebel: Judge Dietsch, the existing recording equipment, have you had any need for repair? Those are three years old now, is that correct?

Councilmember Goebel: So you’ve had no need for the maintenance contract for that?

Councilmember Goebel: And you would like to install the same equipment in six more courtrooms or five?

Terry Dietsch: Five more units. At one time we discussed getting a spare, but upon further reflection I don’t know that it would do that much good. We don’t need to have an extra one around. I mean, even if worse came to worse and the whole system went down and had to be replaced, we could replace it for less than half of what a service contract would cost.

President Winnecke: I do like the idea of looking at purchasing these yet this year. Right now we have a balance of just south of $1.3 million. I think that is something we ought to look at closely.

Terry Dietsch: We can get back to folks right away and actually get a bottom line figure because I think they made a mistake in their math. We can do that rather quickly.

Terry Dietsch: Just a moment. Did you say that the representative was on vacation? Until when?

President Winnecke: That’s fine. I would say let us...give us our time to kind of deliberate after we hear all the requests and at our August 22^nd meeting we may ask you to come back with an appropriation yet this year for the five new machines.

President Winnecke: So I would say just kind of stand by for more on that one. Mr. Tornatta?

Councilmember Tornatta: Mr. President, would we maybe advise him to put that in the appropriations for next month just in case? I mean, once he finds out about it he could put something in for an appropriation. We can, at that point, we would have the ball rolling because he would have some money there.

President Winnecke: I’m fine with that if you want to go ahead and file the appropriation.

Terry Dietsch: Alright, and then if it is determined later that it shouldn’t be done you can inform me.

Terry Dietsch: Any other questions on that item? On page 109, 3903 Petit Jurors when we initially did the budget prior to submitting the budget, we took a look and I think we were a little gun shy with the retracted case we had that required bringing a jury over from Clark County and sequestering that jury when you’ll recall I came back and we had to make a transfer. But upon further reflection I think we’ve been getting $50,000. We asked for $60,000. I still think we can get by with $50,000 rather than $60,000. Another item, 3942 Judge Pro Tem, generally we had a minimal amount of $500. Judge Niemeier asked if we would put an additional $500 in there for 2007. That has to do with...I forget what it has to do with, but anyway he indicates that he may need an additional $500.

Terry Dietsch: And, unless I’m mistaken, I think those are the only line items where we had asked for an increase.

President Winnecke: Judge, you might talk about briefly the office furniture request.

Terry Dietsch: That’s a line item that likes to be...that you like to zero out and I understand that, however, you have to realize that we have now like eight or nine courtrooms, we have all these offices. You know, we’re not talking about one court. We’re talking about seven unified courts and we have a lot furniture and a lot of equipment and we’ve gotten a lot of new stuff with the refurbishing which is terrific. But, from time to time, there are things that need to be repaired. For example, presently I’m told that we need two couches repaired in judges offices. Not in their office, but in the outer office, you know, where the public uses it. Regardless of when we go downstairs to look at miscellaneous chairs or file cabinets, okay, sometimes we can use them and sometimes we can’t. We have people requesting items, furniture items, equipment items, all the time. We file them away and then we try to do what we can on a small scale. And we do have some items that need to be repaired. It’s that simple. If you’re going to zero all those accounts again this year you’re going to zero all those accounts. I understand that.

President Winnecke: Any other questions of the judge? Okay, thanks for your time today. We’ll see you in a couple of weeks.

President Winnecke: Oh, I’m sorry, we need to get to Drug Court, too. Page 112.

Terry Dietsch: It’s less than last year and it’s just a question of appropriating it.

Lisa Whitehouse: Lisa Whitehouse. Still morning. I’m here on behalf of Judge Trockman. He is currently in Baltimore with his son. I’m sure you guys are all aware of the situation. This request for this portion of money is simply a standard 25 percent cash match. It is the same percentage that we have requested in the past. This is money that is funded, a position, one of our day reporting officer positions. It funds a home verification officer. The increase from last year is based specifically and you’ll see that it is only about a $3,000 increase from last year. That’s based on the three percent increase or whatever the increase that the Council deems for the county employees, to increase that which affects, obviously, the PERF and the FICA with the salary increases. It’s not a huge amount of money, but it is something that is definitely needed. I was here when Mr. Miller gave the presentation. This grant is funded from the same state entity that funds his portion. The difference is that his is a multi-jurisdictional task force and it’s also a much larger grant than ours. Ours is only about $100,000 or $112,000. I do not anticipate them, because of the difference in the forms that the grant is given, the increase of our percentage for our match will probably go up next year, but not as significantly as theirs is. The fiscal year, obviously, with this grant runs differently than our county fiscal year. It runs April 1^st to March 31^st which does cause problems sometimes in figuring a number. If the numbers look like it’s more than just a three percent or a $1,500 whatever the Council deems appropriate for county employees, we have to overlap. I’ve got to ask for enough money to cover three months into 2008. I don’t anticipate any further appropriations for this year unless something comes up and we get notice from Indianapolis.

Lisa Whitehouse: Line 3370. That is a data management system. Judge Trockman has looked into and I think, Debbie Mowbray, unfortunately, is not here, a management information system that will help track data statistics. It is a program that is designed more specifically for drug courts to be able to get the information that the state wants to see if these programs really are...what they’re supposed to do. If the recidivism drop, this program is the one that, after a lot of review, they have found to be the best program which suits our needs. It is one that is also used in other drug courts in other counties.

Lisa Whitehouse: I’m not sure. I think they do it more manually and they have a program that is based on our Probation Department program. It’s just not as specific. The new grant forms they want now have...they want to know drug of choice. The first age used, your social class, your gender. They require so much more information in this next grant cycle that the program that the normal Probation Officers use is not specific enough and this program is which is why the cost of it is a little more significant it seems for one program. To ask for $10,000 for one computer system, but when the state is funding $75,000 or $85,000 it’s hard to tell them no because we would end up using manpower which we do not have to track all these numbers.

Lisa Whitehouse: Our insurance did and the reason our insurance went down is that position is filled currently by Todd Wilson and he is a relatively new employee. In the past we’ve had three people go through there. One was a long term county employee, we had hired another person who was here for a short term and he left. When Mr. Wilson came in, he actually has a spouse who has, for some odd reason, and how I don’t know, a better insurance policy than the county does so he opts not to use our insurance. So when I wrote the grant and, you know, filled out the budget papers I called him to verify that wasn’t going to change, so I was able to cut that number. Now I can’t say that next year his wife may say, okay, I’m quitting my job, I need insurance, but that is a huge decrease for our budget because he is not asking for any insurance.

Lisa Whitehouse: To be honest, I wasn’t there. I believe there were nine. Yesterday was my wedding anniversary so I spent time with my husband and I didn’t attend the graduation. We normally have...I think they run graduations about every third month. There are normally between seven and eleven graduates every three months.

Lisa Whitehouse: It is. It is very packed. Depending on the number of graduates how many come. We have police officers that come, Mr. Miller obviously comes, a lot of the outsourced services we use, Southwestern, Stepping Stone, we also have that work with job placements and they do come, so it is–

Lisa Whitehouse: –a very nice thing to come through for these people to come up and realize that they’re getting their life back.

Councilmember Tornatta: Yeah, it’s very rewarding when you go to these graduations just to stand out in the back. So you can imagine how rewarding it is for somebody who is getting their life back on track.

Councilmember Abell: I just have one question, Lisa. The software that you’re going to buy, the tracking, is that going to require any assistance from Computer Services to keep it backed up?

Lisa Whitehouse: I don’t believe to get it backed up. Maybe to help install it. I’m not sure. That is something that Debbie Mowbray, who is our Director, is getting more information on. The idea is to have those on laptops, notebook style computers, and not on our network computers.

Lisa Whitehouse: As far as my understanding is, no, they are not going to be on the network.

Lisa Whitehouse: Yes. The Drug Court case managers and director can take that information and have it and be able to run it through that without having to use our computer services here with the county to put that in a network system.

Bill Fluty: 194, that’s the USI bond. We supplement that with $480,000 of COIT money and just requesting that same amount is also paid by Surtax and Wheel Tax. It has a payoff date of 2010.

Bill Fluty: It’s a slight increase. It’s just reflecting the highest pay year for the entire bond and I think that’s 2028. And that is paid by property tax and that is a rate on the property tax sheet.

Bill Fluty: Okay, on my budget I don’t think there are any increases in any line items with the exception of salaries, insurance, PERF and FICA. And there is one decrease in Contractual Service of $10,000.

President Winnecke: Any questions of the Auditor on his? Pretty straightforward request. I don’t see anyone who has any requests or questions.

Bill Fluty: I have a reassessment budget and there is one increase in that and that’s in computers. We have about 30 to 33 computers in our office at any given time and we’re doing a refresh program to not have anything more than five years old so this just would complete that. That is a slight increase.

Councilmember Tornatta: Bill, do you...I guess we talked to Z and she was about $2,000 a computer and you were $1,500 a computer. Is that just because of the software and different access points or were you given options? I guess I’m trying to figure out, we ought to have that box unit number. I think we’ve talked about this on accounts before, have that box unit number that we would expect to pay per unit and I didn’t know if you had reflected any other services?

Bill Fluty: I think what we’re looking at is, I have different skill levels and different computer needs between different employees. You know, if we’re using Laredo, or we’re using Proval, or we’re using the VAX system, or some people are using all three, and are doing more with different software, there is obviously a different cost. That’s why you can’t say each computer is going to cost X because we have different levels of users. So it’s a combination of different things. We need a high end with memory for certain ones and a little lower end if they’re just accessing and not doing quite as much and not needing all the bells and whistles. So there is a little difference in each unit.

President Winnecke: Okay, we have reached the end of the agenda 35 minutes before our allotted time. Congratulations. One reminder before we wrap things up, we’ll reconvene tomorrow at 9:00 and then the joint city/county budget hearing is tomorrow at 3:00 at the same location. Any other–

Councilmember Tornatta: Yeah, Councilman Wortman, I just wanted to know, have you been through the basement lately just to see what is down there? We’ve talked about that for the six years that I’ve been on Council here and maybe we ought to get an inventory of what is down there and if that has all been cultivated maybe we ought to get some of that out of there. You get a report for us if you could, okay?

The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 9^th day of August, 2006 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 9:00 a.m. by County Council President Lloyd Winnecke.

President Winnecke: Good morning and welcome to the continuation of the 2007 Vanderburgh County budget hearings. We had our first day of meetings yesterday. We went to almost noon. We’re scheduled to go to noon today. Just a reminder for those sitting at home watching on television and not normally a viewer of these proceedings, we are hearing requests for 2007 appropriations this week. We’ll consider the requests, we’ll have some questions from Councilmembers on many of the requests that we’ll hear today, and we’ll vote, make a final vote on the requests at our April, I’m sorry, our August 22^nd meeting. So, having said that, we’ll begin with Family and Children’s Services.

John Schroeder: Good morning, my name is John Schroeder. I’m the Assistant Director with the Vanderburgh County Office of Family Resources and Department of Child Services.

John Schroeder: Okay. I have given each of you copies of some information. The first thing is the smallest one I’ll tell you about, and that’s a requirement that we are required to provide you twice a year, based on Indiana Senate Bill 400 from a few years ago, that discusses the type of payments we made in certain accounts, both for children in need of services, or wards, and also delinquents that we are paying for. Those are provided for the first and the second quarter of the year. This is the second quarter that we have to submit to you. Then, following that are two a little thicker booklets of the two accounts, one’s the Family and Children’s Fund, and the other is the Children’s Psychiatric Residential Treatment Services Fund. On the, under the cover page is the actual request. Now, what it was advertised is a little different, a little bit more than what we had requested. Unfortunately, we have to go through our central office in Indianapolis, and we don’t get this information until usually late in July. So, we try to provide information up front, but the actual request is on, for the Family and Children’s Fund, the various accounts are in there on this page right under the cover sheet, as signed by Judge James Payne, who’s the head of DCS in the State of Indiana. These accounts, such as Child Welfare Services, Care of Wards in Foster Homes, Care of Wards in Therapeutic Foster Homes, Care of Wards in Institutions, Independent Living for Wards, Preservation Services, Miscellaneous Costs that we must pay, and Adoption Services, and also Foster Money to pay insurance for foster parents. Those are the various accounts, along with a couple of the, an account on interest on temporary loans. At this point in time, we don’t have any temporary loans, but we always try to leave a small amount in there in case we do have to take out a loan, we would have the account open and could transfer money in there. The total on that would be $17,670,663. The amount to be raised by the tax levy is $10,165,423. I included all of the pages of the information that we use to try to calculate, and, again, we’re projecting the remainder of this year, and, of course, next year for the budget. I also would like to remind you that most of the payments out of these accounts are not discretionary. We receive the bills because the children have been placed either in institutions, foster homes, or need care with their families. That is on the Family and Children’s Fund account. The other packet includes the requests for the Children’s Psychiatric Residential Treatment Services Fund. This one is that account that was set up a couple of years ago for specifically entitled children in certain institutions. Only certain institutions are paid and then reimbursed by the state in some instances on this. So, we have those there for you. That account has only one line item on it, and we’re asking for $145,000 out of that one, and the tax levy would be $137,931 to give us a working balance for that.

President Winnecke: Thank you, John. Any questions of Mr. Schroeder? A lot of material to digest here on the fly.

President Winnecke: So, we may have some questions for you at our August 22^nd meeting.

President Winnecke: County Commissioners, page 82. Okay, we’ll begin with, the Commissioners have several budget items before us today, we’ll begin with the Commission and the Commission CCD budget, page 82.

Cheryl Musgrave: Thank you members of Council, Cheryl Musgrave, County Commission President. I just want to thank you for the time and effort that you put into the task that you have before you today. I have great respect for the work that you do in reviewing everyone’s budget. All of the Commissioners are here today, as well as several of the department heads and others who have a line item in the budget. They will be here to assist in answering any questions you may have. I would like to thank them for all coming as well. Our budget is heavy on economic development this year. We’re asking for road funding projects, we’re asking for new organizations to be established, specifically the Southwest Indiana Economic Coalition, and the City-County Economic Development Department. With your permission, I would like to lead off with the Southwest Indiana Economic Development Coalition. Commissioner Shetler will make a presentation. We also have Mr. Ed Hafer here to speak for the coalition. I will address the City-County Economic Development Department, and I have with me here today Greg LaMar of the Department of Metropolitan Development to assist in that presentation. So, I will now turn it over to Commissioner Shetler.

Tom Shetler: Regional economic development is vital for the continued success of our county’s ability to attract new commerce and industry. The Economic Development Coalition of Southwestern Indiana and the Evansville-Vanderburgh Enterprise Development Agency has the makings of a perfect partnership. Evansville and Vanderburgh County have the cultural amenities of the museum and the Philharmonic. We have the educational opportunities at Ivy Tech, USI, and U of E. We have the entertainment venues to offer, such as the Zoo, Roberts Stadium, the Centre, Casino Aztar, a multitude of shopping opportunities at various locations, and, of course, Eastland Mall. We also have an abundant source of water and sewer services to offer. Gibson, Posey and Warrick Counties bring to the partnership land, an abundant source of land, a stronger sales force and a unified team to help close the deal. With I-69 now a reality, we must not squander this opportunity to attract high paying, good jobs for the people of Vanderburgh County. These are exciting times, but it does not come without a cost. Currently we contribute $185,000 towards economic development. Our request next year is to increase that investment to $285,000. I would like now to introduce Mr. Ed Hafer who is here to elaborate in more detail about the regional effort. Thank you.

Ed Hafer: Thank you, Commissioner Shetler. I’m Ed Hafer, I’m a member of the board of directors of the Economic Development Coalition of Southwestern Indiana. Representatives of the coalition have appeared before this body and the County Commissioners. We’ve had individual meetings with representatives of county government were part of the task force that set this up. So, I think, Commissioner Shetler pretty much gave a good, broad overview of what the coalition is about. But, simply stated, it’s a four county organization, a public-private partnership, a non-profit corporation. It will have a board of directors that will be equally representative of all four counties. This body has appointed one of it’s members and an outside appointment. The County Commissioners have done the like. The Mayor of each of the county seats will be on the coalition board. We envision it very rapidly becoming a staff of approximately six people, eventually growing to something in the neighborhood of eight, with a total budget of about $1.2 million. The county’s share of that budget will be pro rated on the basis of population. As Commissioner Shetler said, the goal is basically to attract new investments, which means new taxes, the like, and to create jobs, high quality jobs, really jobs across the entire spectrum for all people. If you believe, as I do, and the members of the coalition, that through initiatives such as I-69 and other things, that this region is truly at a point in which we should be able to expect, reasonably, that there will be significant economic growth in the area. It’s important that we present, from this region, a four county combined approach to the pursuit of those prospects, the response to requests that we get, relationships with the State of Indiana, who will need to be a partner in these sorts of things. So, we think it’s critically time, it’s critically important that this four county organization be established. That’s not to take away the fact that, as you’ll hear in a moment, there will still be the need for Vanderburgh County, City of Evansville organization to respond and promote the specific attributes of Vanderburgh County. But we think it’s time, and, obviously, other areas of the state, such as Ft. Wayne, Indianapolis, Southeastern Indiana, who are also establishing similar organizations too at this time. So, I would urge you, on behalf of the overall economic development efforts of the area, to act favorably on this budget request. Thank you.

Cheryl Musgrave: The four county organization will do wonderful things for the southwestern region of Indiana. It will bring new business to the region. This new business brought to the region must be shepherded through the local process. The four counties will need their own economic development departments. Currently Vanderburgh County has no economic development arm or staff beyond the personal efforts of the members of Council, the Commission and our own staffs. It is time that we formalize this process, and to make our ability to respond to incoming new business official, we need to develop, in partnership with the city, a City-County Economic Development Department. Mr. Greg LaMar will make some remarks as well, but I first want to draw your attention to the line items where both of these entities funding is being requested, and make some adjustments. In the General Fund budget, line item 3111, it lists City-County Economic Development at $200,000. As the sheet I’ve distributed to you shows, that number should be $150,000. Line item 3531--

Cheryl Musgrave: 135. Mr. LaMar, would you like to make any comments on behalf of the city?

Greg LaMar: I’m here representing Mayor Weinzapfel. Again, we think this is a very, very important change in our organizations, both from a regional standpoint, but equally important, if not more important is actually putting together a single purpose economic development agency within Vanderburgh-Evansville to actually do economic development and see what we can get done. I think it’s going to be very, very positive. Thank you.

President Winnecke: Just to clarify for members of Council, in your budget books on page 83, it’s line 3115, and that amount is $150,000, which is what we have. Then, on page 85, line 3531, $135,000, which is the number that we have before us. I would just, I have a question if someone could address how the two will interact with one another? The City-County and the, how it will interact with the coalition?

Ed Hafer: The coalition will be responsible for the overall marketing of the region, and will be the initial focal point of requests to the area. But, each county, while we’re together in this in terms of promoting things for the overall good of the four county area, each county, each governmental entity will need to respond on an individual basis, relative to sites that are available in their county, meetings with bodies such as yours to discuss incentive packages and things like that. Essentially, the coalition will be the marketing arm for economic development for the region. The county-wide organizations will be the specific responder on behalf of each of their counties to particular requests. Again, one of the other things that is critical to economic development, as you are aware, is infrastructure, transportation, sewers, roads, so, we think that working together as four counties to promote those sorts of initiatives will also be a major chore of the coalition as a whole. Did that answer the question?

Councilmember Goebel: Mr. Hafer, what existing units or bodies that have maybe similar roles will be absorbed and eliminated?

Ed Hafer: With respect to the coalition, the primary one will be Vision-e, Vision 2000. Those, all of the functions of Vision 2000 will be absorbed by the new organization.

Ed Hafer: Well, the, certainly in the four county areas, the overall marketing of those counties and everything will be absorbed into the new coalition. The organization will, or the responsibilities for specific responses and things like that will be, will move into individual county organizations, just as we’re proposing to establish in Vanderburgh County.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, and then all these will be in one office? All these entities will be in one office, is that correct?

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, and will the other counties have a representative in this main office? Or will they be in their own county?

Ed Hafer: Well, all of the functions of the coalition will be in one office, yet to be determined. The, I think it’s the intention and would make sense that Vanderburgh County, if that office is located in Vanderburgh County that the county office be located, but I don’t think that the Gibson County office will be located in that building, or the Warrick County. But, I’m really, that’s being a little bit presumptuous.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, then in this budget, do they have rent or a building chosen that fits in this budget? Or is that outside this budget?

Ed Hafer: The $1.2 million includes, you know, rent, salary, marketing materials, trips, etcetera. That’s all in there, but, again, a site has not been selected as of yet. We are currently in the midst of a search for an executive director, retained an outside firm to assist in that search. We would prefer to leave the final site selection for an office, as well as staffing and some of the other things, to a new executive when he or she gets on board.

Councilmember Tornatta: Then, as far as approval, the approval of their budgets will go through the board and then be submitted to the different four Councils, is that what I am to understand?

Ed Hafer: I think the approval of the budget of the coalition will be approved by the board of the coalition.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, and then submitted to the, in this case the Commissioners?

Ed Hafer: Well, we’re committed certainly to a totally open, transparent, as we say, process. So, I mean, you may most certainly see the budget, see how your money is being spent as part of the overall (Inaudible).

Councilmember Sutton: So, in relation to this EDA office, Enterprise Development Agency, we’ve got several entities involved with economic development here. You’ve got the Commissioners, the Council, the Mayor’s office, DMD, I guess, that’s part of the Mayor’s office. So, what their role, would they then defer that economic development role to this office and step back and allow this particular office to take the lead? Help me to understand that relationship between those entities.

Greg LaMar: Currently, the economic development efforts in the city, of course, are housed with DMD. What we were looking at, in terms of our local, what we were looking at is a very strong relationship with the regional. I guess, the best way that I can think of is the regional agency brings the client’s prospects to the table, and then what the local agencies do is negotiate the deal at the table. In other words, there’s a difference there. In terms of the local economic development effort for us, we are looking at combining a variety of efforts, including, as you can see on the sheet that you have, our Downtown Evansville, Inc., the city’s programs, Vanderburgh County programs, our certified technology park, which is downtown, and just recently we’ve merged that with the Small Business Incubator, which is the old Orr Building, the Evansville Airport Authority with the land that they’re looking at again, or are going to be, will be run through this office, as well as the Port Authority that the city just recently established. Again, we think that having one focal point for efforts in Evansville-Vanderburgh County is very critical, and this will be the agency that, in fact, will handle that for the city.

Councilmember Sutton: And the staff numbers on this, have you determined what those are going to be as we see what the budget is?

Councilmember Sutton: Okay. I’m pretty sure everybody on this Council probably has a number of different questions on this, I don’t want to monopolize the time, because we have a pretty full agenda today, and this is the first time we’ve had a chance to see this, but one last question. I see this as, the organizational structure, it’s classified as a public-private corporation, correct? But I don’t see private dollars investing in this. I see public dollars. Where are the private dollars?

Greg LaMar: Oh, a lot of that is through other support such as, well, Downtown Evansville, and also I think there’s other support that will actually be going through the regional organization because of the advertising aspect of it. Again, the efforts for what is happening here in Evansville-Vanderburgh County, a lot of it is going to really depend on what we put up as resources beyond that.

Adam Prager: Hi, I’m Adam Prager with Prager Company. If I may just clarify a couple of points here. One is with regard to the private sector funding, there will be significant private sector funding going into both of these organizations. The Downtown Evansville, Inc., what’s listed on the first sheet, I believe, that you have, which states $275,000, that is all private sector dollars. It’s private sector dollars that are generated from corporations, small and large, that go into downtown development. That money will become part of the City-County organization. There will be other funds as well. There is another point that I would like to make, and that’s that there is a big distinction between these two organizations. The City-County organization, it’s true, this organization will be responsible for shepherding and nurturing opportunities that come to the region in making sure that the fair share make their way to Vanderburgh County. But, I don’t think, what has not been discussed yet, is the importance of supporting existing businesses within Vanderburgh County. Today there is no formal, robust effort to identify the needs of businesses throughout Vanderburgh County, and then work quickly to address those needs. There is no formalized aggressive business retention and expansion program. That will be a huge role of this organization, to work with the companies that are not just located in urban Vanderburgh County, but in the more rural areas as well. Second to that is there’s really no formalized effort for, related to entrepreneurship. Part of the City-County organization will include the incubator, that’s going to be helping to cultivate businesses, but in addition to that, this organization will be looking for opportunities to take ideas that are generated through individuals and businesses around the county and provide a mechanism to convert those ideas into viable operations. In other words, to make a real entrepreneurial development program out of what is today sort of a collection of pieces that have not been effectively assembled. Thank you.

Councilmember Abell: I don’t know who wants to answer some questions, any of you.

Councilmember Abell: It has to do with this economic development. Obviously, that’s what we’re talking about.

Councilmember Abell: In looking at the regional one, which totals almost a million two hundred thousand dollars, what if one of these counties decides not to participate? Then does Vanderburgh County have to, does it become a three way split then? And does Vanderburgh County have to pick up the brunt of it? How is this going to change our budget?

Adam Prager: I’ll field that one. Well, I can tell you that all signs right now are in favor of each of the four counties contributing. We’ve made a lot of progress. There has been significant interest, and it does look like the funding is going to be there from all four counties. There is no scenario where Vanderburgh County would be asked to contribute additional dollars to make up any shortfall that other counties would not be providing. We don’t envision that scenario, but the dollars that are being sought by Vanderburgh County are the established portion of the budget here, and the doesn’t change regardless of what the other counties do or don’t put in. There is an effort underway as well to generate dollars from the private sector, it’s not just the private sector within this county, it’s the private sector of the businesses throughout the other four counties as well. So, part of the effort that’s underway is getting public and private sector individuals in each of the other three counties to reach out to their counterparts, both within the government and the business community to generate their fair share of dollars as well.

Councilmember Abell: How did you arrive at 11 percent for Vanderburgh County, and all the other counties substantially less?

Adam Prager: The overall budget, you’re referring to the regional organization?

Adam Prager: The overall budget is $1.2 million. Of that $1.2 million, $400,000 is public sector dollars. The public sector dollars are divided among the four counties based on per capita. That’s how we arrived at that figure.

Councilmember Abell: Now, about the Evansville one? That total is approximately $900,000. This appears to be an entirely new department. This is probably not a question you can answer. Probably one of the questions one of the Commissioners might have to answer.

Tom Shetler: It essentially is. I mean, it’s, in fact, I guess, it’s one of the first times it’s become public that we’re going to continue on with the Evansville-Vanderburgh County department. What, basically, I guess, the analogy I would use, it’s kind of like McDonald’s, you know, in Chicago at the headquarters they market and they count the dollars as they come in and stuff, but their objective is to try to sell the hamburgers nationwide. It’s up to the local franchise guy to fry them and to take care of them. That’s kind of what we’re doing here, is that you’ve got the regional that helps market and sell and bring it to the table, and then you’ve got the local guy here that has to help facilitate, to bring the services that are necessary. In some situations I envision us actually cooperating very closely with Warrick County, much like Lynch Road was done, and helping to bring services of roads and sewers and water lines across the county line and into the next county so that we can actually open up for businesses in those areas. So, I think it’s, the local is essential in actually servicing once that hamburger has been sold, if you will.

Councilmember Abell: Has there been any thought to maybe servicing that next year after this regional group brings the people here? I think this is maybe a little premature. I mean, we don’t have anybody yet. So, we would have an office just sitting here doing virtually nothing until the regional group. Actually, you know, and let me finish before....during budget hearings, and I read my minutes again last night so I would be sure of this, I asked if Vision-e was going to go away, and the answer that I was given was, yes, it would go away. This regional group would be the only funding we would have to present, and then Mr. Winnecke said there may be a minimal amount that we may have to be asked for a county agency. I happen to be someone who does not think $150,000 is a minimal amount of money. That’s as much as we gave Vision-e. We’re really not getting rid of Vision-e. We’re really just creating a whole new department and growing government. I mean, that’s the way I see this, and if you can explain it to me to make me see it some otherwise.

Tom Shetler: I guess, the point that I would use is not to forget what Mr. Prager had brought out earlier. A very essential part of it is being able to facilitate and take care of local businesses, people that we have. Good examples: Brake Supply, Shoe Carnival. If it wasn’t for the local abilities, I don’t think the regional, in and of itself, can help deal with those kind of things in the same way that a local entity can service them and can deal with them. So, I think those are two fine examples of ways that show that we do need to have local involvement in coordinating the efforts for the regional.

Councilmember Abell: Well, I’ve got a lot of questions, but we don’t have time. I’ll just (Inaudible).

President Winnecke: Mr. Tornatta and then we’re going to kind of wrap up and move on. We do have a full plate.

Councilmember Tornatta: I guess, I’m kind of following up on what Councilman Abell was saying, we had $135 million in the Vision-e account, and we’ve had that for several years. Did we not think that that mechanism was doing the job? I know it was brought up by Commissioner Musgrave, and I think it was some good points on how it was run, and maybe not so efficiently, but at the same time we did have a mechanism in place. I guess, I would like to know how we see this would be a different mechanism? Because we did have the hamburger guy, or wherever we were going there, but I don’t know how this is going to be so different for $15,000 more.

Tom Shetler: I think we’re dealing with basically, overall we’re dealing with $100,000 more, and, essentially, what I think we’re doing is attracting more businesses by having a regional approach to it over a four county area. We didn’t have that kind of unification before. We had a very competitive environment, where we were fighting against Gibson, Gibson is fighting against Warrick, and Warrick is fighting against Posey to try to get the same people here. I think we’re going to have a unified, coordinated effort. When you have that team approach to it, I think it’s a lot more significant–

Councilmember Tornatta: We’re not talking about, we’re talking about Vision-e. I’m not talking about a regional approach, I mean, that’s been in the works for, pretty much we’ve been talking about that since I’ve been on Council in 2000. I guess, what I’m talking about is how do we address the local end, and we’re upping the local end price from what we’ve been paying, and by all conservative notions we were talking about even possibly bringing the local side down because we’ve got more players involved.

Tom Shetler: I think the local is having a little bit more influence as far as the actual participation by other governments on that side of it, as opposed to private. Whereas, the private is going to be more involved in the regional. That’s why the cost may be going up slightly.

Councilmember Tornatta: Right, and like I said, my point is, Vision-e’s budget was 135, let’s see, Vision-e is going to be 135, is that right?

President Winnecke: 135 for the four county coalition. 150 for the Evansville-Vanderburgh County effort.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay. My point is, our local arm has been Vision-e, and it’s been $135,000. We’re , do we have these mixed up possibly on this sheet?

Councilmember Tornatta: Right, but we’re saying our local arm is going to be 150, is that right?

Councilmember Tornatta: So, we’ve not brought the cost down, I guess, that’s where I’m going.

President Winnecke: Let me see if I can, maybe I can clarify it, if I understand where you’re going. That is, the four county coalition budget, the $1.2 million budget, as Mr. Prager described, was derived at based on per capita population.

President Winnecke: So, because it’s more pieces of the pie, our piece is lower than it has been because we were one, we and the city were two of the primary funding sources of Vision-e. Does that–

Councilmember Tornatta: Right, I guess, I’m looking at the local side. We’re not bringing our local costs down for exactly what we’re doing locally. We have had that process in place. I guess, that’s where I’m asking, how are we bringing our local side down? What was it not doing in the past?

Adam Prager: I’ll try and speak to those couple of questions. I would hope that nobody in this room, or even in this region has been fully satisfied with the level of new business investment that’s come either into Vanderburgh County or come into the region. There are a number of reasons for that, but one is quite simply that so many of today’s site selection decisions are made regionally. That and, as was mentioned earlier, one community may have the labor, but lack the land. Another one may have the reverse. Communities are banding together like never before to attract investment, and growing the pie really means coming together as a regional organization that is a collection of players to do that. My own personal background is corporate site selection, among other things, and I can tell you firsthand that when there’s bickering between counties, when there’s infighting, that often results in businesses choosing to go elsewhere, because they need the coordination between multiple parties. So, when it comes to creating and growing the base, you will be far more effective, and far more efficient at doing it as a regional organization than you have been as one. Vision-e has done some efforts to represent the overall region, but it hasn’t done it truly in a coordinated fashion where all parties were sitting at the table working in unison on the same projects. That will make a tremendous difference. As pertains to the City-County organization, there is a void that exists within Vanderburgh County today. There is a void in terms of economic development. DMD has filled in where it can and provides some economic development related services, but it’s really a community development organization that focuses on the city, and it helps the county when it can. There is no formal economic development program within the county, which means, and if you were to poll businesses around the county, I would imagine that a disproportionate share of them would say, we don’t even know what services are available. We wouldn’t even know necessarily where to go to receive the assistance that we need. 75 or 80 percent of all, I don’t want to monopolize this, but 75 or 80 percent of all economic development comes from within. Not attraction of companies from the outside, but growing the base from within. If you don’t have the mechanisms to do that, you’re losing opportunities. You can also better address issues like what’s happened with Whirlpool and others when you have a mechanism in place to address them. Plus the entrepreneurship element that doesn’t exist, really in a formal way, that represents the whole county. So, one of the reasons that we’re talking about additional funding is that we’re adding significant services to the county that simply are lacking, or they’re being done in a sort of ad hoc fashion now. Thank you.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, thank you. You know, initially I wasn’t near as comfortable as I am today with this. Having spoke with other collective officials from other counties, a lot of corporate people here locally, it does make sense. It, if you look at it from the outside, and you’re someone looking at this area, you’ve got a strip of land this big, or you have a strip of land this big. I mean, the bigger strip definitely is more appealing, and a much better drawing card. But, one of the things that no one really has mentioned that’s important is, when you have three or four counties working together, you don’t really have the thread of one county bringing in industry or maybe monitors your quality of air, your water, what have you. I mean, all four counties are buying in and supporting whatever that project is, and I think that’s very important. But, my last point is, and maybe we don’t have to settle this today, but I would like to look at possibly shifting this to Riverboat. I mean, we do have the Economic Development line item within Riverboat that possibly we could move all this to.

President Winnecke: First of all, we’ve turned the volume up, so if you...typically we leave our mics on, but if might turn your mics off. That might help with the feedback. Yesterday we had trouble hearing.

Councilmember Sutton: We’re trying to really consider the Commissioners whole budget. I know we don’t want to get so focused on one item, and we’ve got a number of other departments.

Councilmember Sutton: So, and in that vein, this is an important topic, I really wish the whole Council weren’t hearing this for the first time during budget time. We really needed to hear a presentation on this to really give us some time for some thoughtful discussion, because all of us are really short in our responses and our discussions and we can’t really ask as many questions as we really want to, because we’ve got a number of other budgets. So, I don’t know if we need to really consider having an opportunity to really talk about this specifically, because I know we all have some ideas, some suggestions, I would like to hear some feedback, and we can’t do that in the context of really our budget hearings here, and then also take care of this other business.

President Winnecke: Okay, we’re going to move on. Point well made. Let’s go on to....we’re going to change tapes first.

President Winnecke: Okay, we’ll go back to the Commissioners budget, page 82. What we have done, we’ve been asking folks to do is just start line by line and go through and describe the rationale for the increases in funding from this year to next year.

Cheryl Musgrave: Just so I understand, you’ll be going through our rationale that we submitted?

President Winnecke: Just for clarification, it’s the bottom of page 82 in our budget book here.

Cheryl Musgrave: It is the same request as last year. The amount of $25,000 was requested from the Building Commissioner for demolition purposes for buildings in the county. The Bond and Insurance, which is the next line, the $148,000 increase is to cover the increase in insurance costs. The insurance agent has suggested a five percent increase. Is that different than the figure we have here? I think it is.

Cheryl Musgrave: Please put in the figure 842 instead of the one that you have there now.

Councilmember Raben: Cheryl, on the Bond and Insurance, are those annual payments?

Cheryl Musgrave: Bring that over here. The Bond and Insurance, annual payments, I believe that they are annual payments.

Councilmember Raben: So, would it be safe to assume that if we’ve spent $756,000, we could add five percent to that?

Cheryl Musgrave: Okay. Southwestern Indiana Mental Health is to cover the annual CPI increase, as stated in the contract. That is the same case for the next item, Hillcrest Washington. The EARC increase of $41,000 was requested by letter from the EARC, and we asked for representatives to be here. Is anyone here? No one is here to explain that, but if you would like a copy of the letter, we can get that. Soil and Water has asked for a three percent increase for their cost of living. Emergency Medical, the $19,700 increase is for the increased contractual costs for AMR. Urban Transportation, it’s listed as EUTS, it’s now called the MPO, that is their budgeted increase. Animal Control is the joint City-County department, my understanding is the number that you see there will likely be revised when the city brings new numbers across. The City-County Economic Development Department, as you have already shown a correction in that figure. Telephone, $90,000 is the increase to cover the cost for the existing phone system, and the transition to the new system. Mr. Matt Arvay is here if you have any questions with that. EMA–

Councilmember Sutton: Excuse me, just a minute, you’re going too fast. Now, is that new equipment? Is that new equipment, or what’s going on now with the spike up $90,000 there?

Matt Arvay: Good afternoon. Actually, the new phone system there is going to be equipment, but we actually are going to have a transition period of about four to six months to install a new system. This is just to make sure that we have all the bases covered, in case there’s, the difference within that time frame, with both systems being up. We still have three years remaining on the old contract, but we’re going to reduce that to minimum phone systems by replacing them with the new phone systems, which is going to reduce our costs over the next year upcoming.

Councilmember Sutton: Why wouldn’t we wait until the existing three year contract expired before we get into a new project? What’s the problem with the existing system?

Matt Arvay: It doesn’t have the capabilities of the new system. We’re looking at, if we look at the same ten year period that the original contract was signed, the county will save upwards of over $700,000. So, it was a matter of saving money, putting in new equipment, better capabilities.

Matt Arvay: Well, capabilities like we can do, each office can operate how they see fit, with what we call hunt groups. So, if you have a customer service focused office, you can have phones automatically roll over, you can see what the response times to the citizens calls are, you have a lot more accounting and reporting capabilities, you can tie that into billing systems as we move forward, because it’s going from an analog system to a digital system.

President Winnecke: We’re going to hold up for a second. We’re going to adjust this sound system one last time. So, let’s take a brief, we’ll take a ten minute recess at this point and reconvene, and, hopefully, we’ll eliminate the feedback. The audio feedback, I mean.

President Winnecke: Okay, we think we have our audio problem fixed for the moment. Mr. Sutton has moved down to a microphone that we think is better. Mr. Raben knows he’ll have to speak louder, because his microphone is deficient. Anyway, I appreciate everyone’s patience. Let’s continue, I would ask you as members of Council, since the Commissioners have a lot and we are kind of running late here, if you have questions as they go through their rationale, let’s stop them and ask them at that point. If there are no questions, I know they have support personnel here. If they don’t hear anything about their line item, I’ve told them they can leave. So, you might just keep that in mind.

Councilmember Tornatta: The question on Telephone is, moving back, how long is still in the contract?

Matt Arvay: At the end of three years we can re-up with another contract. There’s a difference between the digital lines and the analog lines. We’re going to still need very few analog lines for fax machines, alarm systems, things of that nature, but the regular phones will be replaced. So, if a phone needs a new number added or if somebody moves offices, that automatically happens in-house with staff, versus currently we pay somebody an hourly rate to do those things.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, then on this new telephone system, how far along are you in the process? Because, it’s not been brought to us. So, there would not be monies in place. So, I hope there hasn’t been a contract signed for this amount.

Matt Arvay: Actually, Ted, do you want to talk about what we went through yesterday with the contracts? We’re leasing the equipment. We’re leasing, so that was actually approved yesterday. You may want to address.

Councilmember Tornatta: I would like it to be addressed, because we have a contract without financial backing, and that’s against the law in Indiana.

President Winnecke: Actually, there’s money in place. We have a Telephone line item in place.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, but, the amount, but, I don’t know if the amount’s covered. That’s why I’m trying to find out–

Matt Arvay: Yeah, that line item will cover the amount of the contract, because it’s a lease over six years, or five years.

Councilmember Tornatta: The 210? The 210, because that’s what we budgeted last year?

Matt Arvay: Yes, and the equipment will be leased. So, what you’re going to see is your monthly rates, that just covers our month-to-month bills.

Matt Arvay: This line item covers our month-to-month bills. Currently we’re paying about $15,000 a month, you’ll see that reduced, over time, due to the new phone system.

Councilmember Tornatta: And that goes in place this year? This new system will go in place this year?

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, I would like to have...if you could work up some type of spreadsheet so that we could see how that’s going to work, because I...we’ve had it in the past where things have been done without money in place, and we don’t buy into that.

Matt Arvay: I’ve got a whole document that tells you how I got the RY and where the rationale came from. I can provide every one here.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, being budget time we would like to see that as soon as possible.

Cheryl Musgrave: Thank you. Emergency Management, again, is a joint department, and the city will provide final numbers, I believe, when that is available. Department of Information Technology, this is a request to move that line item back to the Commissioner’s budget.

Councilmember Sutton: Excuse me. On that line item there, is that the same line item that the Council picked up last year.

Councilmember Sutton: If, because in the Council budget we still have, last year we budgeted $852,000 went into the Council budget for this particular area, Computer Facility Management. Now, this year we’re requesting two million out of our budget, and then you’ve got, what is the total amount on your request?

Cheryl Musgrave: I would have to look at another document, but there is another line item where we’re asking for–

Councilmember Sutton: Okay, and you’re looking at one point five, $1,582,000. The Council’s got two million in theirs, because last year we only had $852,000. So, I’m just trying to make sure we got the right lines and we’re talking about the same things here. If we don’t have more than one department requesting the same thing.

Cheryl Musgrave: You may, I don’t know if more than one department has requested the same thing. These numbers were provided by Mr. Arvay to put in these line items, and he can answer the amount questions that you have.

Councilmember Raben: Ours, maybe this will help you, ours is 3530 under County Council.

Matt Arvay: Okay, the $1,582,146 for contractual services is how we look at it. That encompasses several items. Things from office supplies, computer supplies, disaster recovery, the Courts technology is included in that, what they would like, and we have a Courts Liaison to talk about that. Typical third party contractual services, items that usually come up throughout the year, hardware maintenance, software maintenance and any capital improvements. This year we really didn’t ask for capital improvements, we tried to keep those costs down. If a capital item comes up, we would just come back to Council and ask for an appropriation at that time. So, that $1,582,000 are basically those items I just discussed. It does not include facilities management. That is a different line item.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay. So, this includes, I think your numbers are a little bit different than the ones we’ve got here. So, that’s maybe causing some of the–

Councilmember Sutton: –problem here. Yeah, we need to figure out what that is. So, we’ve got two million in our budget, and then you’ve got this budget here which requests, I don’t know, let’s find out if that’s the same thing.

Matt Arvay: The $852,000 that you referred to last year was contractual services minus the Courts request last year. So, that encompassed all the items I talked about outside of facilities management. That’s where you’re seeing the $852,000 last year, I believe. No, actually, I take that back, the $852,000 is for facilities management. I’m sorry. That was the ACS contract, plus the Courts SCR. I misspoke.

Councilmember Sutton: Then there’s a, I guess, does GIS fall under your purview as well?

Councilmember Sutton: We’ve got $271,000 being requested there. Now, where was that before? It’s in the Commissioners budget requested for this year. Where are we pulling that from?

Matt Arvay: That was in the Commissioners, it’s always historically been in the Commissioners budget. I do not know if that was moved last year or not.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, it’s, well, not according to what we’ve got here in our book. It appears to be moved over.

Matt Arvay: And that’s basically reimbursement to the city for the GIS services. That’s outside the joint information Technology Groups budget that you normally see up here. That’s the GIS agreement that you see yearly.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, I see it. Last year we moved GIS, Facility Management–

Councilmember Raben: –and put it under Contractual Computer in the County Council’s budget. This year, not only is it requested in our budget, but now it’s requested in the Commissioners budget.

Councilmember Tornatta: So, we consolidated those numbers in the Council budget, where they listed them out separately?

President Winnecke: Lines 3860 and lines 3870 from the Commissioners budget are exactly duplicated in the Council budgets on page 123. The amounts are identical.

Councilmember Sutton: So, where’s that going to go? Or, I should say, where will it go away? That should be the question.

Councilmember Tornatta: Do we have any duplicating services from the GIS section to what the county’s doing?

Matt Arvay: No, they’re separate now, but through this RFS process that we’re going through, we’re looking to bring that together. So, once we get the finalized negotiations and get a hard contractual number there–

Matt Arvay: –there will be some Facilities Management monies that the county pays to the GIS budget that can be applied to the Facilities Management.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, and how much do we think we will save by moving this new direction, as opposed to ACS and dealing with the city and GIS and everything combined?

Matt Arvay: I guess, it’s a perspective of how you look at it. The current contract that you’re used to seeing in the joint line item, which is the ACS contract was for approximately a third of the network. Their new 2002 contract was approximately a third. So, we’re looking at this in a totality to work together, instead of different groups and this disjointedness that’s been going on. So, you know, if you take the third and multiply the 1.6 times three, and if you looked at it that way, we’ll be saving significant money.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, and then do you have all of the offices in the group now? I know that at one point we had maybe a department that was doing their own thing–

Matt Arvay: There were three networks, and the Public Safety is, we’ve got what we call CivicNet now. So, GIS and Public Safety has been combined. The only group that’s still out there is the Sheriff on the Public Safety. So, we are, we still have VenNet which are the Courts, and we hope to continue to work with them to get them consolidated in and work together. Then you’ll have one system now, which should reduce our costs over time. Because you don’t have to continue to upgrade three or four of the same types of equipment.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, and will you be here when we talk about Manatron and dealing with the Assessor’s offices?

Councilmember Tornatta: If you could, if we have any questions on how those contracts are going.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, would you be over the top of those contracts at that point, dealing with the different services?

Councilmember Tornatta: Because it would be a computer service coming into the Civic Center or the different offices.

Councilmember Abell: Has there been a contract awarded for Facilities Management for 2007?

Cheryl Musgrave: Central Dispatch, this is in two places. This request for $100,000 for a Reverse 911 system is in two places on the budget, and we’re asking that you only fund one of them, but we’ve left that up to your decision. So, it is here on the, is this the General Fund that we’re going through at this point?

Cheryl Musgrave: It is here on the General Fund, and you’ll see it later on the 911 Fund.

Cheryl Musgrave: And for any questions that you have about this request, we have the Director, Joanne Smith from Central Dispatch, if you have any questions. If not–

Councilmember Tornatta: Yes, yes, a question. Okay, we have $100,000 for the Reverse 911, I’ve read about it, I’ve seen it and talked about other cities, but what are some of the advantages of having that system and how it will be used? Then what are some disadvantages to how this system is, as it stands today?

Joanne Smith: Some of the advantages, and if anyone is familiar with the Channel 14 system that they use, it’s called Code Red, it works similar to that, where we would have the ability to call homes, as opposed to them calling us. We would be notifying other, their residence in an emergency. For cell phones they would have the choice of opting in to that system. That would be the advantages of being able to do that. Now, it is not something that would answer our problems that we encountered in November, because it would take a period of time to contact these people. It’s based on the number of phone lines that you have available in your service, in your community. So, that would be a downside of it if there were not phone lines available to make these contacts. It would depend on time of day, what other things are going on, but it would give a resource into homes not only for weather emergencies, as Channel 14 uses it, but for any type of situation. In the city they even broke it down as to if there was a need for Council to be contacted, it could be done through a system of this sort.

Councilmember Tornatta: Well, I guess, you know, initially you look at $100,000 for this system, and, you know, we’ve been trying to just get sirens in our community to cover our entire community. We can’t even, supposedly we couldn’t afford to do that, and it just seems kind of tough at a time when you have call blocking, and you have different mechanisms to ward off different calls that come in. A lot of these calls will get defrayed from callers identification before it even gets to the telephone. I just wonder, have we talked, have they talked about putting more sirens out? Making it so that all the community can hear, not just if you have a telephone?

Joanne Smith: I’ve had conversation on that with Sherman Greer, the Director of EMA, about additional sirens. But, this was an alternative system, a second resource, a resource that would answer needs other than the initial weather needs.

Joanne Smith: The 911 Board is familiar with it. They’ve seen a presentation of it. We do have things that are a higher priority than this. I do agree that additional sirens are necessary, and if it were an option between implementing this in 2007 and adding additional sirens, at this point, maybe the additional sirens would be appropriate.

Councilmember Tornatta: The sirens would be affected by the weather, the department of weather, they would put the warrant out for the sirens. Where the Reverse 911 would be dealt with by who?

Joanne Smith: The Reverse 911, depending on the provider, would be dealt with in different locations. It could be dealt with locally. It could be dealt with in any particular office. It could be dealt with totally at Central Dispatch, as the sirens are.

Councilmember Tornatta: But, the National Weather Service would make a quicker decision to get the siren to let more people know audibly, at that point.

Joanne Smith: They do notify us, and we do set the sirens off, at their request. As well as the request of Public Safety.

Joanne Smith: The providers vary as to how they deal with putting this information out. Some provide equipment that you use yourself and send those calls out. Others you contact the company and they send the calls out. It just depends on the provider.

Councilmember Tornatta: Because some calls are coming out of, I know I read something on San Diego or San Francisco, one of the two cities has it in place, and they’re getting calls from Tennessee.

Councilmember Tornatta: Which, in turn, it’s an Indiana company that we’re talking about, which is a great asset, and that’s who they use, but they’re getting calls out of Tennessee. Which, their call blocker picks that up, or they look on it and it says Tennessee, they don’t answer the phone. I just worry about, you know, the opportunity to get as many people as possible. We’ve went the route of the siren. At this point, if it’s not high on your board’s list, but the sirens are higher on the list, I don’t know why we couldn’t spend the money on the sirens. I guess, that’s what I’m looking at.

Joanne Smith: I think that when this, the investigation on this began is that we want to look at all, we want to cover all our bases, and provide that service to as many people as possible, and look at a service that will not only give us coverage in weather situations, but would cover other needs as well. This would provide other needs as well.

President Winnecke: Other questions on that before we move on? Thank you, Joanne.

Cheryl Musgrave: Youth Services requested $5,000 increase. Youth Resources is the entity that spends that. Transportation Services, this is for a $50,000 increase to cover the METS contract expenses for transportation services for the elderly and handicapped. Southwest Indiana Disaster Resistance, this is a $10,000 annual payment. Last year it was dropped from the budget. That’s all I have for the General Fund. Which fund do we move to at this point?

President Winnecke: I do see Mrs. Shirley James in the audience from the Pigeon Creek Greenway. This is not an increased amount, but as a courtesy would anyone have any questions of her? It’s not necessary, but she did come down here.

Councilmember Tornatta: She’s got an interesting story about what she found in a few of the tourism spots.

Shirley James: Yes, in fact, Bettye Lou, by the way, ladies and gentleman, I want to thank the Council and the Commissioners for your support since 1990. I don’t know what I would have done without Sandie and Sarah, very efficient and they were a Godsend to me.

President Winnecke: Thank you for your letter. We read it into the record just a couple of weeks ago.

Shirley James: Good. Anyway, the state plan is for trails, is going to put a lot of money into trails. The Governor’s goal is to do a trail before every Hoosier’s house within 15 minutes, or 7.5 miles. His idea for handling wastes and things like that through the Greenway easements would be very excellent. It’s a very visionary plan. I won’t go into it here, because, for the simple reason I see you have a time element. I would like to speak to the Council on this at another time. It’s going to be a real benefit to our county, I think. Also, the folder that you’re getting is a thing, my husband and I kind of went around looking at Southwestern Indiana information centers and everything during the fall, and we got in some of these information centers and what did they have? They had all of Southwestern Indiana’s trails with the hub city of Louisville. So, what we decided to do is, the advisory board decided to make Evansville the hub city for our Southwestern Indiana. I mean, after all, it’s to our benefit. Believe me, the state loves this brochure. With that, if I can answer any questions.

Shirley James: All of our money that you give us this year will be devoted to getting us in alignment with the state, and getting some of that money down here.

President Winnecke: Thank you, Shirley. Okay, let’s move to the CCD budget, if that’s alright.

Councilmember Tornatta: Can I quickly ask about the Southwestern Indiana Disaster Resistance?

Councilmember Tornatta: What, kind of how does that get back in the budget? What exactly do they do again?

Cheryl Musgrave: That request, I was hoping that Roger Lehman would be here, which he’s not here. Could I ask you to ask him at the joint budget hearings this afternoon? That is a department head function. He oversees that.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, and, I guess, what I was looking at is they’re funded by a lot of different funding mechanisms that would kind of be in this new economic development area. My question is, have we talked to this entity about joining that process? Because they do a lot of functions for, say Toyota, USI, and other areas.

Cheryl Musgrave: We can certainly have that discussion. Mr. Prager is gone, and Mr. Prager is the one who initiated many of those discussions.

Councilmember Tornatta: I brought that to several people on your board, and, I guess, I’ll bring that to you since you are going to be sitting on that board as well.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay. Okay, well, then I’ll address you and say that this would be an opportunity to check and see if any of their functions would be covered in that coalition group. I know that they do get funding from several mechanisms, private mechanisms, and if they could come in and fund any of those mechanisms that would do similar processes, maybe we can bring them into the fold.

Tom Shetler: It’s actually being done now. They’re looking at that. They’re having a breakfast in early December joining the Chamber, the regional chamber that’s being proposed along with this group to actually facilitate just exactly what you’re speaking towards. So, it’s already in–

Cheryl Musgrave: First line item, Mr. Nix would answer any questions, Old Courthouse Contractual, $400,000 to cover renovations of the Old Courthouse Wedgewood Room to begin the rental of that room.

Bill Nix: As you all know, and this group, and, I guess, Councils before you have appropriated funds to renovate the Old Courthouse. Of course, you know what’s taken place over there. We’ve got a new roof, a new copper flashing system, new gutters on the outside. We’ve got a new heating and cooling system, which is state of the art, was done the right way, something that will last a long time. I sit on the Old Courthouse Foundation and we are, we’ve hired an architect through funds on the Old Courthouse Foundation to look at renovating the Old Courthouse. The way we’re looking at this is, here you’ve got the money that the Council’s spent, up to right now the county government has spent on these others, on the roof and on the heating and cooling and electrical systems, we feel like we need to take this another step. Understanding the constraints of the Council with money, the Old Courthouse Foundation, like I say, has taken it on its own to hire an architect to look at what we could do to renovate the interior of the Old Courthouse. One of the ideas that we came up with was that the Wedgewood Room, from time to time, we’re asked by a lot of different people to rent out. It’s in pretty bad shape right now. The idea with the Old Courthouse Foundation was to possibly look at maybe renovating that room, and possibly some areas outside the room, to kind of jumpstart the project. This would give the public an idea of what the rest of this would look like with donated funds to complete the rest of the project. So, that’s the reason for this request.

Councilmember Tornatta: Do you have any type of revenue projections on the room? Or do you have anything that just illustrates what you think the costs–

Bill Nix: We have not taken it to that step yet, not at all. But, I do know that this particular room is on the Centre’s, in other words when the Centre rents out space, it’s on their available list. So, I mean, it’s, it would get utilized more, but, like I say, right now it’s in pretty rough shape.

President Winnecke: Over time, the usage has just dramatically gone down because it’s in poor condition.

President Winnecke: So, to do a projection, a revenue projection would really not, it would just show a decline, I mean.

Councilmember Tornatta: I mean, I guess, what I’m saying is, if we think there’s a need, then a need has a dollar value associated with it. If that’s the case, I just didn’t know what we thought we were looking at as far as, if we put $400,000 into that room, what would the county see back out of it through the Courthouse?

Bill Nix: I think it would be awfully hard to project that at this time. I think it’s going to take some of the completion of the whole project before this would really be, before you could really put that into play. Because, I think that this would help promote the rest of the project, and that’s really what we’re looking at. Plus the fact that we could start taking in some revenue right now with it. But, as far as a projection, I just couldn’t give you anything like that.

Cheryl Musgrave: The Loan Agreement is the $117,000 to increase the costs of the contract. Park and Playground is a million two. Burdette Park is here to answer any questions you may have about that.

President Winnecke: Could you describe the Park and Playground improvement requests?

Steve Craig: Yes. At this time, we have several projects over the next year or so that we was looking at. Some of the smaller ones is that we’re trying to replace the chain link fence at the pool. Some of the perimeter fences are rusting and becoming a problem. I might even add it to some of the vandalism. Looking at installing a new chalet, replacing sidewalks from the front part of the park down to our office. They are highly used and they are becoming a hazard to the people at the park. Replacing one of our ATV’s with another ATV, trying to use a vehicle that gets better gas mileage than a truck. We’ve used one extensively in the park over the years, and possibly a new pickup truck. One of the other things that we are wanting to use some of this money for is the trail that would be leading to USI. We have been negotiating and working with SIHE who represents USI’s interests, and we have a very interesting project going on that would connect Burdette to USI, where the students could either use it for a walking trail, riding bicycles, nature trails. This is something that Shirley had brought up a point that the more trails you get, the more you get aligned, the more money that is available. We want to get this jump started. We’ve had excellent cooperation between us and USI. The bulk of that money would be going to that trail system that would connect Burdette and USI.

President Winnecke: Steve, could you provide the Council, and I don’t know if you have copies of it, but could you provide a breakdown of each of the six or seven items that you listed? A breakdown per cost and kind of the priority as you see it? It sounds like the trail funding might be the highest priority, but I think it could be helpful if we could all see what you feel is your priority now, and how much each of those costs.

Steve Craig: I don’t have that breakdown with me. I do, you know, have a list of stuff here, but I could get you a breakdown tomorrow if you need it.

President Winnecke: If you could get that to Sandie, and she would distribute to all of us, that would be helpful.

President Winnecke: Other questions of Mr. Craig while he is here to talk about this particular budget? Mr. Tornatta?

Councilmember Tornatta: Yes, on the study that was done on Burdette Park, do any of these, where do they fit on priority? Any of the items that you’ve mentioned.

Steve Craig: Most of them are in it. Some of these would come under, you know, a vaguer part of it, like the upkeep of the park. They emphasized that, and some of the replacement of the perimeter fences and sidewalks would be part of that. They suggested building several new chalets, which is right in there. They’ve suggested doing trails, handicap accessible, we built, this year we had built a handicap accessible restroom. Most of these would probably come under the maintenance part of upkeep of the park. But, the trail and the chalets were part of the master plan that we had did, I guess, it was about three years ago now. But, all of them, I think, are under it in one way or another. Like I said, a lot of them might fall under maintenance, because they’re just some major maintenance projects.

Councilmember Tornatta: And are there any grants that we’re seeking at this time? I thought that when we were looking at a few of these processes on bike trails and whatever, there were some grants available.

Steve Craig: We are. We have applied for federal and state funding. At this time I don’t think we know the results of them. I know that some of them that were put out weren’t included.

Steve Craig: Well, I was just told that we’re not getting either one of them. So, this probably even becomes more of a priority. What has happened, there used to be one county in Southern Indiana, Southwestern would apply for it. This year there was probably hundreds of applications for them, for these trails. But the more that you get, like Shirley had said, the more you get, the more, you know, become available to the state and federal grants.

Councilmember Tornatta: Then, and maybe this isn’t a question directed to you, but do we think that we’d be more, in the application process, next, we would be a better candidate next year? I don’t know if we maybe didn’t get our paperwork in before other groups got theirs in, but would we be a better candidate next year to get funds for these trails?

Steve Craig: Our paperwork was in on time. It was not something that we did. By not getting this, if we don’t have the funds that we’re asking for here, it probably puts the project back two or three years every time you do this application for the federal and state money. You know, we’re still in the planning stage, designing stage at this time of the trail. So, it would take a year or so to build it, a year or so to go with the federal funds. So, if we get the money next October, you’re talking about something that would be done in three, four, five years, whereas we’re looking to get it done quicker. That does make us available for more funds if you do have some of these trails in place. Like I said, the competition state and federal wise is getting extreme.

President Winnecke: Other questions? Steve, while you’re up, oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Wortman, go ahead.

Councilmember Wortman: Line item 3440, Advertising, could that be converted to the Convention and Visitors Bureau? We did that last year, I believe, some of that.

President Winnecke: That’s something we can certainly look at. I tell you what, while we’re, let’s change the tape and we’ll just jump into this budget, if it’s alright.

President Winnecke: Let’s move to page 115. Since Steve is here, we’ll just go to his budget. Steve, if you could just identify the line items that are where you are asking for more money next year over this year.

Steve Craig: Okay, the first one would be the number, on mine is 1180-1450, and it’s Other Employees. I’m asking for more money in that first of all. We’re having some trouble getting people at our aquatic center, but other ones is that our management people are making $8.00 or $8.50 or maybe the highest one in the park is $9.00. These are people that are school teachers and professional people that work for me in the summer and they need to be paid more than that because I am having trouble getting them, I’m having trouble keeping them. There are a lot of jobs out there at this time that pays a lot more than eight or nine dollars an hour and these people are in direct contact with these children every day. They’re taking care of my money for my facilities and that, and I was wanting to give them across the board as a raise. That was on the first page. The next one was in Gas & Oil. I think that’s pretty self explanatory. Fuel and Butane, just the prices I foresee going up. We asked for $500 more in Uniforms. This was predicted by our uniform company, which is a contract, that it would go up about that much. Laundry & Cleaning, we’ve been short in that account for several years. I just came back to the Council to receive more money in that. Office Supplies, I raised that $200. We’re short on that, or close to being short, every year. The next one was account 3200 and that was Utilities. I have already came back for utilities. Our utilities, we do everything that we can to make this work on the money we get, but unfortunately it is hard to make it work all the time. Advertising, I asked for more money in Advertising. We do go back, Curt, every year and go to the Evansville Visitor’s Convention Bureau and they do a matching fund of a certain percentage of our money that is used to attract people from outside of the tri-state area to the tri-state area. One of the things in the Master Plan that they emphasized was that we we’re not promoting ourselves enough and, you know, this is like a pyramid building thing. The more you promoted yourself, the more people you see in your park which would spend more money and, in essence, spend more time in Evansville.

Steve Craig: At this time Axiom does. Like I said, their numbers were way, way above what I asked the Council every year for in Advertising. Just percentage wise on what our budget is and what our facility is they had told us to ask for a lot more money in that account.

Steve Craig: At the present time that was the area that we took. We’ve tried every one there is, you know, from radio, to t.v., to business to business advertising, and at the present time, most of our money has been spent this year on outside advertising. The next one is line item 3590 Pool Operations. There are several things that I want to do at the pool and one of them goes back to replacing some of the aging sidewalks, aging fence structure, but we’re also wanting to do some putting barbed windows over some of the glass windows to prevent vandalism. Do some, what I would call preventive maintenance, when it comes to vandalism. Maybe have a t.v. system or cameras set up. There are several things at our aquatic centers, the slides are getting to be 20 years old. We want to redo the bases to them which are concrete structures that the slides sit on. Upon inspection this year we did some repairs, but it looks like there may need to be a lot of repairs done in the next year or so to make these still usable. They’re not in dangerous position, but they’re getting at the point where they do need quite a bit of maintenance and we’re looking forward to doing that next year. I think other than that–

President Winnecke: Steve, I would ask you if you would let us know what rate of pay you would like the part-time, you just kind of bundled all those together and gave us one big increase, but if you could submit in writing what you would like each of the line items to be, what the hourly rate would be, and submit that.

Steve Craig: I had done it. I had thought Joyce had gotten it to you. Okay. I’ve already done that. I thought you guys had that. I apologize.

President Winnecke: Perfect. Thank you. Other questions of Steve while he is here?

Councilmember Tornatta: Steve, just curious, and I haven’t been on, but you have your own web site, correct?

Councilmember Tornatta: Does that...when somebody goes and logs in this region, does it go to water park, does it hit Burdette Park at that point, or do we have a function that would do that? I know that if I am looking at other parts of Indiana, if I am going to be in a town and have kids, obviously, I’m might look at that.

Steve Craig: You would have to go to the Vanderburgh County one, and then you would log onto Burdette and proceed from there. Are you asking if we are on a statewide one that says parks?

Councilmember Tornatta: I was just wondering. Sometimes it can be overlooked, but if we can get on something that deals with water parks and Burdette Park pops up, maybe it would just be that attraction, because when people from out of state are looking to go to a region, a lot of times they’ll do it over the internet and look up some instances where they want to maybe go to a show, or go to a water park, or play golf, or whatever is their pleasure. At this point, maybe we can get something that would facilitate growth through Burdette Park on a no cost basis by using the internet.

Councilmember Raben: Are you talking about like Ad Words? Going through Ad Words where if someone is checking Holiday World, Burdette Park pops up?

Councilmember Tornatta: Yeah, well right now, if you go to Indiana water parks, we’ve got to make sure we’re on it. You know, just see if there are Indiana sites that will direct people down to this area. I know that they have several different, whether it is Holiday World or the beaches up in northern Indiana, they’ll have certain accommodations or certain water park criteria or water parks in the area. If we could get on something like that, maybe that would help us from a standpoint that we would be on the internet a little bit more than we are right now. I don’t know how much we are on the internet with Burdette Park, but that might be an opportunity.

Councilmember Sutton: Yes, Steve, on line 4220 Office Machines, what is that request?

Steve Craig: That’s for new...I’m sorry, I missed that. That’s for two new printers for our reservations computers and we received the new computers this year and our old ones, I think, are twelve years old at the present time and we was told that we need to replace them before they go down. If they go down in the middle of summer, we would be in major trouble.

Councilmember Sutton: Is this a...where did you get the price from? You just kind of put in a figure or have you–

Steve Craig: No, that was the price. I think they were $2480 a piece, or something. They were given to us at the time when the computers were put in.

President Winnecke: Okay, next Drainage Board page 80. I doubt that there will be any questions there, but everyone turn to page 80 in your hymnals just in case.

President Winnecke: Any questions for the Drainage Board? Okay, thank you. Commissioner Nix, you did a fine job.

Cheryl Musgrave: Oh, I’ve lost Riverboat. I believe we only had one increase in that line and it was for Economic Development from $150,000 to $500,000, is that correct?

Cheryl Musgrave: That would cover...it was intended in the filing of this budget to cover the incentives that the Commissioners would put forward, for example, other recent Brake Supply the state put up money and the county was required to match that. That’s where that money would come from. In the past my understanding is that the Commissioners were funded at the $500,000 level so that is why that figure was chosen. That’s all.

President Winnecke: Any questions on the Riverboat budget? Okay, thank you. We’ll move on.

Darren Stearns: This is the general manager at SMG and for The Centre. Some of the requests that we had for increases for this year were in regards mostly to utilities and the Teamsters benefits and salary.

Councilmember Sutton: Can you walk us through on your budget request? There are some things that were excluded in here, so will I find that someplace else? In particular, I am looking at line 3536 and 3537 and line 3798.

Darren Stearns: My understanding is, with the new contract, that’s the way the events are, that we’re working off of the revenues that we have in the building itself, instead of coming back and forth. Also, on some of those that you’re looking at on there, it doesn’t have the management fee on there in 3537. That balance is actually the balance that was left over from last year.

Councilmember Raben: (Inaudible) there is a requested increase of about $90,000, is that correct?

Darren Stearns: Well, on an average, yes. It’s with the utilities also, yes, there is about $20,000 in the Teamster benefits. We put in the three percent salary increase.

Councilmember Raben: Councilman Sutton raised the question that 3955, that $788,000 represents what used to be 3536, 3537, 3798 and 3955 correct? That is the sum of those four accounts lumped into one line?

Councilmember Raben: But there is an increase of about $90,000 over last year. So where does that increase fit in? What we once knew it as, I mean, is there a particular line?

Darren Stearns: It would be in the operating account because the operating would have the utilities in it. Also, the management fee. The management fee is now in that $788,000 number and that was at $140,000 is the management fee and then there is a qualitative assessment that can be assessed to that depending on how we perform. I think it’s an additional 20 or 25 percent. So that was another increase of about $30,000 if they’ve reached that number. If we reach that number.

President Winnecke: Superintendent of County Buildings 93. Health Department, I haven’t forgotten you. I just want to knock out all the Commissioners while they are all here.

Councilmember Tornatta: Mr. President, just real quickly, I was talking with somebody from the labor side, Teamsters, and one of the things that we’ve been able to do and hopefully we have ongoing processes is to get The Centre and the Teamsters to talk about timing and employees’ work timing and try to bring down that overtime. And I think that they’ve come a long way in trying to bring down that amount of overtime at The Centre, so you know, it’s a nice bit of communication between the two that is starting to develop, and I think it is going to be very successful for the county.

Bill Nix: It’s a good point, Mr. Tornatta. In our last contract we worked out, and the Teamsters worked with us, for some leniency for working rules and we’ve actually made some changes since then and I think that’s reflected in some of our overtime costs, so it was a win/win situation. Like I said, there were some things that they needed and wanted and we got what we needed, also.

President Winnecke: Okay, Bill, or Commissioner Nix, if you would like to just kind of go through.

Bill Nix: You don’t want me to show the decreases then, right? Just increases?

President Winnecke: We can spot the decreases and we’re grateful. Superintendent of County Buildings, 93.

Bill Nix: I figured you could. The fourth line item, Buildings & Groundskeeper, we’ve got some additional overtime that we have from time to time for locking up in the evening and that, and then this person covers for overtime or covers when the union person over there is on vacation and off. Additional 25 percent. That really is the only increase that I can see other than the normal pay increase.

Bill Nix: Okay, I was just handed this. Gas & Oil, we needed a $100 increase to cover gas for the truck that is used over there and I think that’s pretty self explanatory. There is a $10,000 increase to cover water and electric costs for the Old Courthouse. That’s kind of a pie in the sky number because of the way utilities are right now. That’s kind of what we budgeted. Contractual Services, a $1,000 increase to cover the existing contract for services to Terminix and Cintas, they’ve got increases. Repairs to Buildings & Grounds, and I think that is a new line item. We’ve just continued having small things to do over there to keep the maintenance going and that is a pretty small item, but something I would like to see in there.

Councilmember Tornatta: We did receive something from Keep Evansville Beautiful and it did have to do with the Coroner’s Office, and I believe I’ve made a call just to try and make sure that we are taking care of that building as well. Are there any other buildings we might ought to look into to make sure that we’re taking care of all buildings outside? If we can do that and not have outside contracts from these individual offices, I think that we’ll save the county some money.

Bill Nix: Right. I am of the understanding that Mr. Duckworth had a crew go out last week to the Coroner’s Office and do the cutting there. I think they’ve got some money budgeted for that. I was going to call Mr. Erk today and see where they are at with that.

Councilmember Tornatta: Well, they have a contract but, you know, I talked to Don and I said why would we need a contract for those services when we should really be taking care of our own at this point, unless we advise other outside offices that they need to start putting that in their budget.

Bill Nix: Right, correct me if I’m wrong, but the Coroner’s Office is a city/county building, isn’t it?

Bill Nix: Strictly county, okay. Well, it’s something that we’ve never done before.

Bill Nix: We’ve never been asked to, so I’ll get with Mr. Erk and work that out. He’s got a $5,000 line item for landscaping, I think.

Councilmember Tornatta: And that’s a place where we can definitely work with the Coroner’s Office and I talked to Don personally and he said he would not mind saving us $5,000 if we knew we had to take care of that particular building.

Bill Nix: I saw the letter yesterday and talked to Mr. Duckworth. Other than the Old Courthouse and now this particular facility, and of course the garage, which the guys are there anyway, I really can’t think of anything else at all.

Councilmember Tornatta: Well, we might review any of the buildings that we hold and that would be an opportunity to do a once over and take a look and if we can maintain any of these buildings with our resources we have now, so we don’t have to spend any additional, that might be an opportunity.

Bill Nix: And I will say Mr. Duckworth, I don’t want to take anyone (inaudible), but I know we are a little strapped for mowing come summertime too, so I think you may be talking to him about that when he comes up.

Councilmember Sutton: Back up on Utilities 3200, we’ve already, and this was through June, spent close to $85,000 in that account and we’re just...you guys are requesting $100,000 for next year. It kind of seems like it might be a little bit low in relation to the utility increases. I’m not going to complain about the request–

Councilmember Sutton: I guess, just trying to be realistic, I guess, this doesn’t seem like that is going to work.

Bill Nix: It’s just our best guess on what we’ve got right now. I think we’ve had the heat...the new heat and cooling system has been in place about a year. It is extremely more efficient than the old system, the floor pipe system is, and right now it’s a crap shoot. If you’re willing to put some more money in there that would be great.

Councilmember Sutton: Now, I didn’t say that. I think we would not be surprised to see you guys coming back, let’s put it that way, at some point in time next year.

President Winnecke: Okay, thank you. We’ll move on to Veterans Administration, page 81. I think this is pretty self explanatory. The largest variance is the fact that the veterans burial allowance has been moved from the Commission budget to this budget which is why you see the $40,000. It’s in the Commission budget for 2006.

Mark Acker: Fair to middling. It’s a pretty simple budget. Not a whole lot of damage one way or the other.

Councilmember Tornatta: Do the Commissioners have to sign off on that, or that allowance, or is that strictly your call, or how does that process work?

Mark Acker: What that is, is we receive all the documents either from the cemetery or from the funeral service or funeral homes. There are specific forms that have to be filled out. They complete those forms to include the discharge papers and proof of residency for the individual. We process all the paperwork and then send the warrant to the County Commissioners for signature and they send it on to the Auditor’s Office for payment. It is logged in our office. We’ve done a hundred...let’s see $16,600 in burial benefits as of to date for veterans that have been buried. Headstone requests are $1,700. I have an entire breakdown at any time of what and who received those funds. It’s in the office and accounted for.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, is there a letter associated with that request that goes out with the check or is that–

Mark Acker: No. There is just a check that is sent out. A check is normally...normally what happens, as a rule of thumb the provider or purveyor of services includes that, such as the funeral home, for example, will show their $100 credit to the family from funds that will be received from the county from the Auditor’s Office back to them. So it’s kind of a checks and balances there. And then we have people periodically call to make sure that was processed appropriately. We are looking at a...one of the problems that we have is that the state legislature has passed an increase for burial of veterans from the current rate to a new rate and I have been working with the County Commissioners in that we are probably going to have to see an increase in the next year to 18 months, asking for an increase for burial allowance from $100 to $250, I think would be the first increment. Am I correct, Commissioner Shetler? Right. Next year I will be coming asking for additional funds to cover these burials. We’re burying around 200 veterans a year in Vanderburgh County.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, and you said, to your recollection, there would not be any accompanying letter that would go out to the family?

Mark Acker: There was a discussion and it was generated by me. I felt like there would need to be some clarification and in the ensuing conversations, that concept became too cumbersome and it was too difficult to try to get everyone to understand what we were trying to say, so sometimes the less said is better off.

Councilmember Tornatta: Well, I think in this case with the families...dealing with the families, that might be the best opportunity. So thank you.

Mike Duckworth: Good morning, Mike Duckworth, Superintendent of the County Highway Department.

President Winnecke: I know, I had to look at my clock, too, to make sure it was still morning. If you would start with the requests that are over and above this year’s.

Mike Duckworth: Okay, I would be glad to do that. Under 2010, the highway account, if you’ll start with Gas & Oil. We’re requesting an increase of $20,000 due to general oil and gas increases. Tires & Tubes, a $5,000 increase due to the age of some of our vehicles and the fact that those costs are rising in that market as well. I don’t have to tell all of you that. Garage & Motor from $60,000 to $65,000. General upkeep of equipment. All of our parts and any labor costs that we may incur. We would incur those increases as well. Uniforms, although we have a contract with Cintas we are in the midst of providing by, I believe it was going to be a state regulation, the bright green attire to some of our workers. The T-shirts and the hats and those kinds of things for more visibility. Oil & Material cost, we estimate a $15,000 increase due to the general market increases. Calcium & Chloride from $100,000 to $120,000. This is in regard to pretreatment costs and that worked extremely well for us to when we get a forecast of a snow event, we have pre-treated our roads which mitigate the ice bonding.

Mike Duckworth: Beet juice, we have an ample supply. We didn’t use all of ours last year, but we never know when the beets are going to have to come in and save the day. We are looking for alternative sources that are cheaper. I may be here talking to you in the future about corn juice, so there is a number of items out there that we’re in the midst of looking at the testing of those items as well. So no telling what we’ll use off the table next to diminish the ice and snow, but we’ll try to be as efficient as we can with it. Also in the 3000 accounts, Telephone, a $1,000 increase. Radio & Pagers, a $2,000 increase. We are in the process of replacing tin cans and strings is what it basically is from 20 to 25 years of age on some of our radios. Utilities, we estimate a $5,000 increase. Computer Data Management, because of our vehicle locator systems and how we would like to expand upon that, we’re looking at a $2,000 increase. Drainage & Assessment, basically through an increase in tax assessment in 2006, I’ve been told to ask for that increase. That is all I have in regards to the highway account.

Mike Duckworth: It’s a tax for our...we have to...the county has to actually pay tax on our ditches and our waterways in the county. This year we had to come back to Council because of an increase because of the number of roadways that we’re adding. Just for general information, since 1991, I’m working with John Stoll and doing some research, we have added somewhere between 100 and 150 plus miles to the county obligation and what we have to maintain, and that is not only the actual road itself, but the shoulders of the road, the ditches, the trees and all those kinds of things, so that has gone up to where we had to come back for extra and we’ve figured that in as well. Any other questions about highway increases?

President Winnecke: Let’s move on to Local Roads and Streets while Mr. Duckworth is here. Page 151.

Mike Duckworth: Again, account 2220 Tires & Tubes, we are requesting a $2,000 increase for general costs. Garage & Motor, this increase of $20,000 enables us to keep, not only our paver upkeep, our patching crews, all the equipment that they use, everything from rakes to just whatever, and we have that Garage & Motor account. We do buy some small equipment out of it. We purchased a backhoe this year out of that and a hydro-hammer, as well as a saw to cut the pavement, so those kinds of equipment, weedeaters, all those things come out of that account and they wear out, is basically the problem. Bituminous Materials in 2530, we asked for $1.1 million because, and I am already receiving increases from Rudolph, Gohmann and David, Incorporated in regards to oil prices and the rise. That will pretty well drive the amount of road improvements that we’ll be able to do. So we would request at least that much to maintain the 33 to 34 miles that we’ve done each of the past two years. There is $500 in Training Expenses. Any time you go to a conference, you know, you have airline costs due to an increase in those costs. Then Road Equipment from $70,000 to $80,000. This is the line item that we buy our mowing equipment, upkeep our tractors, our mow trims, our tree trimmers, all those kinds of things that we have had to deal with there, and we anticipate needing more of that equipment as well. That brings us to 4310, and I’ve had some discussion with some of the Councilmembers and President Winnecke and the Commissioners about that account. Currently that is a $175,000 budget item and that is what we buy some of our trucks out of. We just got our bids back yesterday or a week ago on our tandem trucks with what they call a flow bed, which will eventually enable us to not have the salt spreaders in them because this is a bed that has a multipurpose use. So 30 minutes you could spreading rock and then if you got hit with a snowstorm, within 30 minutes you could change that out and then be spreading salt, so it makes us more flexible in that, but one truck is $112,000 this year. That’s item 3830. We would be looking at possibly just doing some of the beds in some of the trucks. Then out of 4310, this $175,000 what we’ve added to that is approximately $250,000 for a new paver. The average life of a paver that the paving companies tell me is somewhere between seven and eight years and we’re on year 12 right now. To add to this factor this year, you know, we park it on location and it was hit by a falling tree, but we did get...we’ve kind of kept it together with insurance proceeds and some of our other accounts, but we’re to the point where the county has to make a decision as to whether or not this department is going to continue to pave roads or if we’re going to take another route. In looking at that, we have 50 employees. We’ve increased the amount of mileage. Like I said, 150 miles or so over since 1991 and we’ve only added one employee. I am going to suggest that we purchase a new paver for 2007, but do it in a little different way, and that is, we have the opportunity to through an existing account that we have which is a lease account that we still have some dollars available to lease to buy that piece of equipment at what I am told is an estimated amount of about $10,000 per month. One hundred percent of that lease to buy purchase can go towards the purchase, so we would basically revert $50,000 from this year’s budget towards that purchase which would enable us to reduce this request by $50,000. So instead of budgeting $240,000, we would be budgeting $190,000. But I would have to go through the same general procedures to have specs drawn up and have the bidding process, but it would be for a lease-to-buy, manner of doing it. So I guess what I am asking you at this point, is not only to approve this, but to consider giving me permission to enter into that kind of an agreement so that I could get that piece of equipment here as soon as I can this year because I don’t know, we’ve got 18 miles of the 33.6 miles that we’re doing this year completed. That paver could quit tomorrow and now time is a factor. Because of the wear and tear, I don’t know if I could get parts for what would break down and it’s just a crap shoot. So I’m telling you that if we’re going to complete the paving list that the Commissioners and that the people in this community have come to our road hearings and said that we’ve needed it done and that we’ve budgeted all of this money for, if we’re going to complete, that I am recommending to you that you allow me to go forward and do that at this point, securing $190,000 instead of the $240,000 and entering into that agreement this year. I understand you probably can’t make that decision today, but if you would agree to this line item in that regard, I would hope that there would be a way, maybe Mr. Ahlers or Mr. Ziemer could tell me that we could go ahead and go through with this purchase.

Councilmember Goebel: First of all maybe, Mr. Duckworth, you should suggest they don’t park that paver under a tree any more. How long is the lease?

Mike Duckworth: I am going to suggest that we do it for five months. I understand November and December we’re not going to be paving, but to secure this deal we’re going to have to do a five month lease until the first of the year comes here where we can pay the balance and all that money from this year would go toward the purchase of the paver next year.

Councilmember Goebel: And the balance would not change, it would remain at $250,000? So we would be paying just monthly installments is what you’re suggesting?

Mike Duckworth: Basically, that is what we would be doing and utilizing some monies from the 2006 budget and the rest of the balance from the 2007 budget.

Councilmember Sutton: You’re talking about just renting the paver until we can pay for it?

Mike Duckworth: Well, it’s a lease to buy. It’s a contractual agreement that gives us the paver, but at some point in time you’ve got to come up with the balance to pay it off. We would be getting it at an early rate, that’s our advantage, to replace the old one to ensure that we could replace this year’s paving season and it would not be any different than getting through this year and bidding it for 2007 and paying the full $240,000 or $250,000 or whatever it is.

Councilmember Sutton: So when you actually purchase, it do you have that price determined up front?

Councilmember Sutton: Or after the five month period and they make a determination based on the condition or the age...not the age, but the wear and tear on the piece of equipment. How is that determined? Is that determined up front or do you have to wait until five months?

Mike Duckworth: You do it up front and you do it by specs. In other words, we would put the bid out just like we would any other bid on any other piece of equipment over $75,000. They would bid the total cost, but this would have a lease to buy attachment to it, so that they would understand that we are under a lease for five months at $10,000 a month and then that $50,000 that we had used to lease that piece of equipment would then roll in to the purchase price which would decrease it from $240,000, and I’m using round figures, to $190,000. Our balance would be $190,000 because they’re telling me that 100 percent of that lease price would go towards the purchase.

Councilmember Sutton: The paving season doesn’t go on the cooler months, so when are you talking about using this paver?

Mike Duckworth: I’m trying to get this thing delivered within the next 30 days.

Mike Duckworth: Regardless of how much we use it this year, the $50,000 that we would be spending to lease it to get the piece of equipment, these pieces of equipment, sometimes they would take three – five months to get. If we can get one, and I’m not 100 percent sure that we can, if we can get it now, we would lease that throughout the year. The advantage to us is, the total amount of that lease cost that we are paying would go toward the purchase anyway which would decrease what I would request for ‘07.

Councilmember Sutton: Yeah, I understand that, but you’ve got a paver now that works, its functioning, correct?

Councilmember Sutton: And you basically will have until maybe October of paving left in this season?

Councilmember Sutton: And its going to be until spring of next year before you can pave again?

Mike Duckworth: Well, the problem is it could quit tomorrow. It is being held together with Band-Aids and Q-tips, basically. I mean, its getting the job done, its doing well, but if it breaks down and we don’t enter into some agreement now, we could be three to five months out or one month out, I don’t know. I have no guarantees there. What I’m trying to do is work ahead of the curve so that if it does break down or that we can be sure that we’re going to finish this year’s paving season, and if we’re going to buy a new paver next year anyway, why not go through this lease, invest the lease money that the Council has given to us for this kind of a situation, and then deduct that off the 2007. We have the advantage of having a new piece of equipment now rather than taking the gamble whether its not going to make it through the season and then us not being able to complete our paving.

Councilmember Sutton: I perfectly understand what you’re saying. I understand what you’re saying altogether. But still, the same amount of money is being expended whether you’re talking about a one year time period or whether you’re talking about over the span of the next 15 months that we’ve got here. Just struggling to see how the county is that much better off. I understand your explanation fully, but –

Mike Duckworth: The county would be better because we will be able to complete the paving season.

Councilmember Sutton: I would think there would be ample folk out there who are more than willing to sell the county a paver when and if we need one, whether we need it within 30 days, 60 days, or whatever.

Mike Duckworth: I would challenge you to contact those companies like I have because they’re telling me that it could be – I mean, I don’t know. They don’t keep them here on a lot like they do cars. These are things that have to be configured to the specifications that you give them – the width, the amount, orf whether it’s electric, whether its pulled by tracks or wheels, I mean, there’s all kinds of things that enter into that equation, so that’s why I’m trying to work ahead of it. And if it wasn’t in such bad shape, I sure would try to make the end of this season with this one. I just can’t guarantee that it can finish.

President Winnecke: One last question on this and then we’re going to move on.

Councilmember Tornatta: I guess I’m asking, do we have to – I’m not understanding, wouldn’t we have to bid a contract and then we would be in a full contract with them but then the payments would be deferred. Is that what you’re saying?

Councilmember Tornatta: Because we couldn’t enter into a contract and how would we know they’re going to be the lowest bidder?

Mike Duckworth: No, what I’m saying is, we would bid it just like we were buying it right now, so everyone would have the opportunity under certain specifications to bid under those conditions on this paver. If you want to make it X amount of dollars per month. But at the end of that lease, it would be a purchase.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, I’m with you there. But we think we can get that back to us in a sufficient amount of time that would cover you, because you said it could be delivered in 30 days or so and that’s 30 days from an advertisement from a bid process, so I mean, I don’t know if we’d get it before September or October in those cases, so we’d be in the same predicament.

Mike Duckworth: I have the specifications ready in the event that this would be approved. I could probably have the bid process, and you can do it as an emergency bid underneath purchasing guidelines if – there’s a statute that I could show you that basically says, if the need for the equipment would interrupt the process of your job, that you can buy it on an emergency basis. And so I would file it underneath that to expedite the purchase of this.

Councilmember Tornatta: Yeah, and I’m not big on these emergency situations. We’ve been down this road. But I guess what I’m looking at is, is what would happen if we brought this, if you put an appropriation in to the Council and did it by those means, we’d have it for the next Council period and then we could possibly get the ball rolling if that were the case. You could give us some numbers, preliminary of what you’ve found and we could go from there. Do it through a Council process. I mean, because we can’t tell you to do it in this meeting anyway –

President Winnecke: I tell you what, let’s do this, not that this is not important, but we’re running out of time. We’ve been on this for about 20 minutes, so why don’t some of us get together privately and kind of hash this out. And then, I think that’s fair because we do have –

Mike Duckworth: There is one other request that I have on here that I think you ought to consider and I want to explain that. We have requested two additional employees in Cum Bridge: one, a Laborer and one, an Operator. As I said before, since 1991, our department has taken on many, many tasks. Much more mileage and more ditches, more trees, Lynch Road now, University Parkway now, all those things. The reason I requested this from Cum Bridge was the fact that it appears that those employees, that fund is more agreeable to the upgrade in cost. So I bring that to you as well. That’s all I have. I’d be glad to answer any other questions.

Mike Duckworth: Under Cum Bridge, again, the Operator and Laborer increases were zero in ‘06 and the ‘07 budget calls for 35,580 for an Operator and 34,002 for a Laborer. Accounts in the 2000 account, I requested a $5,000 increase in Gas & Oil, $5,000 increase in Garage & Motor for general upkeep of equipment. Again, a small increase in Uniforms, $25,000 in Bituminous Material because we utilize those materials on bridge approaches, and a $5,000 increase on concrete due to the increase in costs of the concrete. We do concrete street repairs, we do sidewalk repairs, we have to utilize for culvert work, we utilize concrete, so that’s the justification for those increases. John, do you have –

John Stoll: On the accounts that the Engineering Department works out of, we requested an increase from 1,900 to $2,000 in account number 3141 Communications. We’ve requested an increase of – actually, its not an increase, it’s a new line item. Actually, my rationale sheets aren’t in order, so if my numbers don’t match the order on your sheet, I apologize. On account number 4410, St. Joseph Avenue Bridge #1921, we’ve requested $200,000 to replaced that bridge. That’s located probably about halfway between Mill Road and Wimberg Road. On account 4417, that’s the new proposed Baseline Road Bridge over the railroad out adjacent to Azteca. The preliminary estimates by the consultant were 2.3 million, so that’s the amount requested there. Account number 4418, that is replacement of a bridge further north up on St. Joe Avenue. It’s a twin culvert structure that’s deteriorating. We want to replace it with a single span bridge, so $175,000 was requested there. Account number 4419, Bromm Road Culvert #1338, we’re requesting $125,000 to replace a large culvert structure that is currently too narrow and deteriorating. We’ve gotten the right-of-way, we hope, worked out as far as the property line issues that were serious problems with the legal descriptions of all the abutting properties. We have since gotten that resolved, so we hope we can get some right-of-way acquisition worked out with the abutting property owners. So that way, come early next year, we can get that project out for bid. Account number 4420, $125,000 requested for repairs or replacement of a culvert on Hogue at Vanness. Account number 4421, we’re requesting $80,000 to repair or replace a culvert on Boonville-New Harmony, and this is east of Old State. Account number 4376, this is $500,000 being requested to replace the bridge on Green River between Heckle and Millersburg. And then the last one, account number 4230, of the $100,000 that’s requested in the Motor Vehicle account, $25,000 is for the Engineering Department for replacement of an inspector’s vehicle, and the balance would be for the County Highway Department.

President Winnecke: John, could you, line 3550 Repairs to Buildings & Grounds, I don’t know if that’s you or Mike?

President Winnecke: $70,000, what is, that sounds familiar, but I can’t recall what that is.

Mike Duckworth: Give me one second. As you may or may not be aware, this year, we have included $100,000 in our current budget for a storage facility for our trucks to keep them out of the weather. And this $70,000 would also add to that an office, bathroom, lunch and training area, so that eventually, the idea was to move Weights & Measures out of the area that they’re renting from into our existing office area.

President Winnecke: Okay, I remember that now, thank you. Other questions of Mr. Stoll or Mr. Duckworth? Mr. Sutton?

Councilmember Sutton: John, the list of projects is pretty lengthy that we’ve got here. How do you prioritize those?

John Stoll: As far as the replacement of the bridges go, we just go by annual bridge inspection and take the recommendations out of that. In any given calendar year they’ll have recommendations as to what bridges need rehab or replacement. I didn’t rank the individual projects in any particular order as far as what’s requested in the 2007 budget, though.

Councilmember Sutton: Do all these projects, I mean, you had like a ten year plan of street and road improvement plan, bridge plan, do all these, I mean, I think that was maybe a year or two ago that you guys had prepared that. Do all these projects fall within that plan or are these new?

John Stoll: Both. Some of those are new like the Baseline Road Bridge wasn’t anticipated back in the last couple of years. Others, if they’re coming out of the bridge inventory book, they do, they would have been reflected in that plan, however, given the fact that the bridge inventory book doesn’t get specific as far as in certain years, for example, we’re due to get another inspection this year. The results of that inspection may not match up to what we got the last time around. It may kick some up as far as saying the need for immediate replacement and may push them farther off. So part of that five year plan, it would just say bridge replacement and have an estimated cost of $200,000, but not specify the exact location. So that five year plan would include some of these projects, it would not include some of them.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, could you get us, before we meet again, I mean, can you get to us a list of, a prioritized list there of which of these projects, where they fall in and maybe something that may have been a seven is now a three or a two, because maybe the condition or something else that might be related to the project. So if you could do that for us with these bridges and tell us how those are ranked, that would be extremely helpful.

President Winnecke: John, if you would, just get that to Sandie and she’ll get it to us.

Councilmember Tornatta: And along those same lines, if you could tell us what the Motor Vehicle needs and the Miscellaneous Equipment needs are, just write that down on a page and that way we’d be able to kind of focus on what the needs of that area would be. And then, will there be any conflict in working on these projects and try to take care of the Burkhardt TIF projects, the 35.6 million dollars in Burkhardt TIF projects that are proposed? I mean, is there going to be conflict or is there going to be ample work to people to go around to take care of all these projects that have been proposed?

John Stoll: Its going to keep me busy, that’s for sure. As far as people inspecting the projects, when the proposals were all set up, it was anticipated that the consultants would be doing the construction inspection on those projects, so the TIF projects wouldn’t be done, the inspection wouldn’t be done through staff in my office, it would be through the consultants, is the way it was originally intended.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, because, I mean, it’s just, we don’t get to see some of these TIF projects on our desks, but did see the list of TIF projects, and that we spent years and years to get a $35,000,000 jail, but in a whim, we had approved these TIF projects on Burkhardt Road, some of them which can be done, a $6,000,000 project can be done by a developer. But yet, we have all those projects going on. I’d say with all those projects that are going, and these projects that we see, where are we at workforce-wise in taking care of those? And there again, we go to a process where we’d like to see – what are we going to do first?

President Winnecke: Let me interject here, not to cut you off, but I have no idea what the TIF projects you’re talking about relate to this specific budget. You’ve asked Mr. Stoll to come up with a list of priorities which I think is fair. I believe that’s fine, I can’t believe the Commissioners would take on a project like that on a whim. I would take issue with that –

Councilmember Tornatta: You can take issue with it, but its happening and its through –

President Winnecke: Its not through a whim, I’m sure. We’ve asked Mr. Stoll for a legitimate request, he has agreed to take care of that and I think that’s a part of that. So let’s move on. Any other questions relating to this particular budget? Okay, thank you, John. Thank you, Mike.

President Winnecke: I believe the last Commission oriented budget, unless I’m overlooking one is 184, Emergency 911.

Cheryl Musgrave: You are looking at increases for the budget, Central Dispatch is a joint department. The city will supply the final number at a later date and you’ve already heard the explanation from Jo Ann Smith regarding the Reverse 911. As I told you earlier, that was in two places, so that sums that account up.

Sam Elder: Fine. Starting with the salary positions, we’ve had three part-time hypertension nurses. They’re the ones that you’ll see in the hallways and the fronts of a lot of the different facilities at the county fair. They take blood pressure. Their primary job is education. They educated a lot of people that have not seen a physician in a long time on chronic diseases: cancer, cardiac problems, and we’re asking that their time be increased four hours per week, the ones that work 16 hours to 20, and the one 20 to 24.

Sam Elder: They’re in 1520, 1530, and 1540 are the three line items. There are three of them. Their total increase would be $11,000.

Sam Elder: And we have a number of requests for these. More all the time from fairs, from different kinds of programs, and we just can’t accommodate all of them.

President Winnecke: And so the request is to increase the hours and not the rate of pay?

Sam Elder: No, just the hours. These people don’t receive any fringes because they’re part-time. All of them are registered nurses and one of them has been there about 20 years in the same position.

Sam Elder: We have one other, 1650. We had asked for an additional Environmental Health Specialist in the environmental section. As you’re aware of it, we’ve had a rodent control program funded by DMD for over 25 years. When we initially received this program, it goes back to Russ Lloyd, Senior, we had five employees in it. But over the years they’ve reduced it. Currently, we’ve got two employees in it and we’ve been notified by Greg Lamar that he’s going to move these people into Code Enforcement. You know, they have a new ordinance. Well, these people have, of course, their primary concern was trash and rodent control. But we used them as our eyes and ears in the inner-city. They worked with the Lead Programs and all of these things. If they saw any family that needed assistance from the visiting nurses, our public health nurses, they informed them. We’re losing those eyes and ears and I’m not certain just exactly how that’s going to work out. You know, the city is going to do all the trash and rodent complaints through the Code Enforcement, we’re not going to do it anymore. And I, there are a lot of things that we did in the inner-city that are not covered and they’re really not equipped to do the Lead Program. For example, we have all the equipment for checking facilities for lead, and they don’t. And you have to be licensed and certified to do that. And they don’t have people that are licensed and certified for the Lead Programs. We receive federal funding in the Lead Program. We do all the blood analysis for all the counties in southwestern Indiana in our lab. Of course, we’re paid for that by Medicaid, for the most part. But we feel that this is necessary, this additional person. When we received these five people, the following year, they reduced the staff in the Environmental section by three, so we really just received the three and the secretary. Are there any questions?

President Winnecke: Are there any questions on that particular request? Okay, go ahead, Sam, please.

Sam Elder: The Social Security, PERF and the Insurance, we don’t have any control over that.

President Winnecke: Excuse me, is Medical Lab Technologist, does that dovetail with – are those – 1640, was that part of the whole rodent control?

Sam Elder: No. That was not – I tell you, we’ve moved some of these positions in the federal grants. You might have money in one and none in the other. Its kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul. As long as what we do is in compliance with the requirements of the state and the grant, and we don’t ever do it without their approval. But that Lab Technician that we moved just recently is what you might be referring to, that’s come before you, is that we were a little short in the lead, that’s the only program we’ve had, the blood testing that is self-supporting. We haven’t had to put any of our money into that because the funding all comes from Medicaid. And we do this Lead Program, the blood Lead Program, at no cost except to Medicaid.

Councilmember Tornatta: Over here. Two issues, I just wanted to know about what your plans were with the advertising budget and what Motor Vehicles you thought you needed?

Sam Elder: We normally, to save on expenses, we don’t let people drive their cars to Indianapolis. We normally have a travel car. The travel car is two years old, three years in term, but we bought it late and we replace that normally every other year. And then we pass the one that we had down. We’ve got some vehicles that’s over 15 years old that are used like in mosquito control.

Gary Heck: It’s a Dodge Caravan, 2003. Its not going to be (inaudible – comments not made from the microphone).

Gary Heck: We do have a travel van as Mr. Elder says, 2003 Dodge Caravan. But our normal practice is when we get a new one, to make sure that its good for going extended distances out of town. But we have the most recently purchased vehicle there and then we swap out the vehicle that has the most mileage on it that wouldn’t be –

Councilmember Tornatta: I mean, are we in direct need to replace that 2003 for an on the road car? Because, I mean, I’ve got a 2003 and I just went on the road and I feel safe.

Sam Elder: Actually, we’re replacing the car, like he says, some of them go back to ‘88.

Councilmember Tornatta: Right. Do you have a list of your vehicles? Maybe we could – we’ll be looking through all these other lists, maybe just throw one more on top of it that –

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, that’d be fine. It just helps us explain why we’re going in a direction.

Sam Elder: A lot of that advertising is legal advertising and I don’t know how extensive its going to be if we follow the city’s problems with it. You know, are you familiar with the problems they’ve had with their trash and debris on advertising? I remember just recently, there were two full pages of advertising on it and I don’t anticipate anything like that. But, and then for positions, we have a hard time finding R.N.’s because we’re not competitive. And some times, the advertising for an R.N. before you find one, might run to 500 bucks. And, to me, that’s a lot of money.

Councilmember Tornatta: Well, I was just looking, we granted 800 last year. You’ve spent about 550, let’s say, this year. And next year, you budgeted $12,000. That’s just quite a big bit of a jump. Maybe it’s a typo, maybe its 1,200. I don’t know. That’s line 3440. Could that be 1,200?

Gary Heck: Gary Heck. Its not a typo. It was in anticipation of a comment that was made during a Commissioner’s meeting when Greg Lamar was talking about the city’s new weed and trash process where they have to go to a hearings officer to comply with the due process hearing for a property owner that lives in their homes. That process, they have to actually advertise in the paper before they can take action to do the cleanup. Their first ad costs them $10,000 to go to that process. And the reason we’ve included it in the budget is because the Commissioners had suggested that the County Attorney look at it to see if they needed to adopt the same ordinance and the same process for the county. If they did do that, we’d be under the same requirements through the same legal advertising and the funds would need to be there. If it doesn’t happen, then this increase isn’t necessary. But we have to at least prepare for the fact that it could happen since it was mentioned at a public meeting and that’s why it’s in the budget request.

Sam Elder: I don’t know if you’ve looked at them or not, but you know, they require permission before they go on the premises now unless you have a court order, you know, to investigate a complaint. And if you’d look at what you have to sign, honestly, I don’t believe I’d sign it myself if somebody handed it to me, you know, to come on. Because you give up a lot of things in it. But they’re not the only one that’s doing that. Some of the other counties in Indiana have been taken to court for violating somebody’s human rights by going on the premises. Brown County, for example, just recently, and we’ve talked to Mr. Ziemer and he’s not committed on how far they might go with that.

Gary Heck: The best way to explain this, if you’ve seen the paper recently where they have the top ten list and they’ve taken the pictures, that’s what this is in reference to. Any of those folks that you’ve seen in there are folks that had their ads in the newspaper saying you’ve got to come to this meeting because there’s been a problem. This puts them on notice. They have their due process hearing, so there’s no potential violations of whatever rights that are there and then, they can go through the normal steps. If this happens in the county, we’d be in the same position where we’d have to do that same kind of process, and the legal ads to do that would be fairly expensive.

Councilmember Sutton: A couple of questions, line 4220 Office Machines, what are you requesting there? Can you give us some specifics? Its for $10,000, but what –

Sam Elder: Well, you know, most of our computers are fairly new and I don’t think any of them are paid for out of local tax money. We were able to get funding for well, even the phone system is paid for with a grant, the new phone system. And I think that you have to have a safety valve. Its just like our phone system is through the computer system. If our computers are down, we don’t’ have but two phones in the facility that you can use and they’re for emergency use. But I don’t know just exactly, printers go out, –

Sam Elder: You know, I’m sure you’re aware of the fact that the only time that the Health Department can obtain funds from the Council is at the budget hearing. We can’t go back like the other departments and ask for additional money. If we had to have more money, we’d have to borrow it and legally, its my understanding you can’t borrow it unless you can pay it back in the current year. And if you could do that, you wouldn’t have to borrow it.

Councilmember Sutton: And then line 3930, what does that include? It’s a $20,000 request, Other Contractual.

Sam Elder: I tell you, we recently got rid of the lead machine that we used for – it was a hood and some things. You have to have that decontaminated and the price of it is out of this world. And we continuously run into things like that. Our hazardous waste materials run about $800 a month. That’s for needles and offal from the V.D. Clinic and T.B. Clinics, and that stuff has to be disposed of. When initially we started, it run about $35 a month, if you look back. But it’s the only game in town. But that’s a big part of that Contractual Services.

Sam Elder: The only other thing on it is the Professional Services. You know, actually, if you look at the statute, we’re supposed to pay our attorney all the time but we never have. And they have us pay the attorney now. So that runs into several bucks. And that’s the reason for the increase in that.

Sue Hartig: Good morning. Sue Hartig, I’m the Director of Legal Aid. The accounts that we have increases on, Bond & Insurance, our three support staff are all notaries and some of their bonds will be due next year. Postage, last year our postage was zeroed out, I think, because we hadn’t used it the previous year, but we’re all caught up. We’ve run out of postage now, so we’ll need that for 2007. Travel, I was appointed to the Indiana Pro Bono Commission and they have at least four meetings in Indianapolis a year, so I’ve added a little to the Travel budget. Printing, a host of our fliers and posters will need to be reproduced. Yellow Pages, we did not have enough funds this year to pay the full bill, so we used funds from another account. So we wanted to increase that. Hardware and Software, we are hoping to get new computers, the same computers and software and hardware that the court gets. The last time I talked to Tim, he couldn’t give me any more of a guestimate as to what that will be. We have six units, six computer units, and two printers. And on the 429 side, we’ve increased Office Supplies a little bit and the Audit, because the Audit was bid out. We bid it out every three years and the cost of the bid went up.

President Winnecke: Any questions here before we go to United Way page? Its 192.

Sue Hartig: And, I’m sorry, I gave you those increases already. That’s where Office Supplies and Audit are shown on the United Way side.

President Winnecke: Susie, I guess I’m a little, am I missing something here? The increase that we’ve kicked around for a while?

Councilmember Tornatta: We do have a balance in your account, in the United Way account, is that correct?

Sue Hartig: That’s a revolving or non-reverting account, yes, and every year there is a little left, uh-huh.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, the first question to Auditor Fluty. Do we draw from funds out of the United Way account first or the general fund account first? Because there are several issues here that, for instance, salaries and line item 2600 Office Supplies, where they could be in both accounts. Which account do we draw from first?

Councilmember Tornatta: Right, and I guess where I’m looking at is why wouldn’t we draw from the supplemental account first and then draw from the General Fund, and then any reverting funds would go back into our General Fund. Because what’s happening here is, they’re ending up in this United Way account with funds left over and we pay the bulk of that entire budget anyway. So I don’t know why they wouldn’t go back into at least our shared city/county.

Bill Fluty: Any funds that are left over in the General Fund would revert back to the General Fund and we would spend out of there, and we can only spend what is budgeted. And then also, in the Legal Aid, you would only spend what is budgeted. Any amounts that weren’t spent would actually fall back into the unappropriated in the Legal Aid funds.

President Winnecke: So if there is any excess money, it reverts to the General fund and there’s never a balance at the end of – am I right?

Sue Hartig: For one thing, United Way is on a March to March year. So I have to have money left at the end of the year so I can get through January, February and March.

Councilmember Tornatta: Well, we’re appropriating money into funds at that time anyway. We have monies in those funds January, February and March. So I don’t think that’s much of an issue.

Sue Hartig: If we didn’t – for example, if for some reason, we (inaudible) to United Way next year, this money would run us through January, February and March as well because we’re on a March to March year rather than a calendar year.

President Winnecke: If you’ll hold that thought, we’re going to change the tapes.

Sue Ann Hartig: They’re paid different because there are different rules. You know, the entire audit is paid on the United Way side because United Way requires it. If United Way required us to–

Councilmember Tornatta: I, yeah, and those are very good points and I won’t argue those points. I guess what I look at is, I don’t believe you should have funds that revert back into anything you have when we pay the majority of the budget, so what we have is, we pay a certain amount, and I don’t have that just right at my fingertips, but we pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $347,000. And I guess what I am saying is, when the United Way pays $69,000, to have money left over that can be used in that capacity, it should go back to the county/city split, whatever the case is instead of going back into some United Way accounts which they can use at their leisure. Even in the different offices that we have, we try and pull all the money back that we can get and put it in the General Fund for the next available year.

Councilmember Tornatta: And in this case, I think it should be no different. We can take any of these monies, use all the United Way funds first that are available, any supplemental monies would then start tapping into the county and/or city combined accounts and that would alleviate any type of excess money in your account. I know that’s from a county point of view, not necessarily from your point of view possibly or your board’s point of view, but I think that might be more fiscally prudent at this time and I would like to bring any outstanding balance that you have in to play this year to take care of any of the accounts, and then move to let those United Way funds be spent first and then the county funds spent second.

Bill Fluty: As the blue claims are being turned in, that is how we’re paying. So if she is turning in blue claims that actually revert to the Legal Aid account, then we’ll pay those, and then if she is turning in blue claims that hit the General Fund, so it is actually Sue’s decision unless you change policy.

Councilmember Tornatta: Well, then that’s my question. I would put that up to this Council. Should we change policy and let all reverting funds go back into the General Fund where we can spend them as we see fit in the county, or should we leave them in a selected fund that we can’t touch?

President Winnecke: Is that our...Bill, would that be our call if there is a balance in the United Way fund at the end of the year, is it our call that it’s non reverting or is it a United Way call?

Bill Fluty: Sue, you do ask them if you do have an appropriated balance, you do come before Council and ask them to appropriate it?

Bill Fluty: So eventually you do have the call as to where that unappropriated money goes.

Sue Ann Hartig: And if you’ll look back, I don’t think we’ve asked for an additional appropriation in quite some time. We use that money if we need a printer or if the copy machine dies or if something happens. So we haven’t asked for much of an increase anywhere beyond the salary, you know, three percent because of that.

Councilmember Raben: Just so I understand what Troy’s point is, let’s always spend United Way’s fund dry. Let’s don’t...I think that is your question.

Councilmember Raben: Does that money get turned back to United Way or if they gave you $69,000 this year and you didn’t spend but $60,000, do they short you that $9,000 next year?

Councilmember Tornatta: If they give $69,000 or whatever their amount is every year, they will not give above that and we’ve talked about the $5,000 stipend. They won’t give $74,000 to cover that as I have talked to the head of the United Way, but they will do the shell game and move those funds around.

Councilmember Raben: So what he is suggesting is that we always spend the fund down completely first.

Bill Fluty: You know, currently, and it’s just a projection if everything works as planned, they just have about $9,000 in unappropriated at this current time.

Councilmember Tornatta: Right, and what I would look to do is to use that $9,000 to take care of some things that would be in the General Fund and take our side down by $9,000. Use those monies, bleed that dry, and then start fresh at that point. Then any reverting monies would go back to the county.

Bill Fluty: Well, as you look at this budget and make a decision on that, that would affect it if you make cuts in the General Fund. Then you would have to use the unappropriated for those needs so you do that when you’re looking at this budget.

Sue Ann Hartig: It’s a little different though on the 501(C)3 side. United Way wants agencies to have reserves.

President Winnecke: But we’re...in all fairness, we’re the, however many United Way agencies that receive funding, I believe we’re the only one outside of maybe Evansville ARC that receives funding from county government.

President Winnecke: Right. So, you know, typically, I understand they want a reserve, but most of the majority of them are not receiving supplemental funding from the county. Any other questions of Sue? We’ll see Sue this afternoon at the joint hearing.

President Winnecke: Okay, Local Emergency Planning Commission, 182 in your hit parade.

Paul Wagner: Good afternoon now. My name is Paul Wagner and I’m the Treasurer of the LEPC. And I guess I have some good news and that is there are no increases, and the actual total budget is $2,000 less than last year. That is due to some computer equipment that we’re buying actually this year, 2006, and we won’t have to next year. My understanding is that this funding comes from the state and federal tax collections from companies that pay a superfund tax for hazardous materials that they either use or make or produce, and that this is a pass through mechanism of that funding. What the LEPC does, you know this is my first time in front, so I don’t know how familiar you folks are with the LEPC, but it’s a group of emergency management agencies, the local fire and police, and sheriff and sometimes we get state police involved, industry, I represent industry, we all get together and plan for what we might do or prepare for an emergency response of hazardous material should that kind of thing happen. So that is the objective of this group. The majority of this money goes for the administrative part-time assistant and training and education, things like that.

Linda Schindler: Hi, I’m Linda Schindler, Director of Substance Abuse Council of Vanderburgh County. We’re asking for $160,000 this year which is $40,000 more than last year due to the fact that counter measure fees have gone up substantially and we have a lot of money in that account. With this extra money we would like to fund more projects in the community through grants.

Councilmember Tornatta: Linda, just real quick, what is the mechanism that pays for this particular office? Is it just County General or are there other players?

Linda Schindler: I think we’re up to $142,000 something right now and just August. That’s as of the end of July.

Councilmember Tornatta: And what type of account balance do you have in the fund now?

Linda Schindler: One-hundred and forty-two thousand or something close to that. I don’t know the exact figure.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, so you might have...do you have...well, it shows here that you’ve expended $130,000.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, and if we granted just what we did last year, it was $120,000, what programs would you have to cut or could you maintain with it for this year with an outstanding balance of money?

Linda Schindler: We could maintain, but we always get a lot more proposals than we can fund in grants. Because we fund, according to the state mandate, we have to divide it into four categories: treatment intervention, prevention education, law enforcement criminal justice and then discretionary which is our overhead.

President Winnecke: Any other questions of Linda? Linda, thank you for your patience. I appreciate that a lot. Okay, we are in recess until 9:00 tomorrow.

The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 10^th day of August, 2006 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 9:00 a.m. by County Council President Lloyd Winnecke.

President Winnecke: Good morning, and welcome to the continuation of the 2007 Vanderburgh County Council budget hearings.

President Winnecke: We’ll begin with the Recorders Office, page 12 in your books. Good morning, Betty.

Betty Knight Smith: Betty Knight Smith, Recorder. I have something to pass out and my Chief Deputy, Rick Davis, will explain it.

Rick Davis: Good morning. Again, Betty has introduced me, but my name is Rick Davis. I am the Chief Deputy at the Vanderburgh County Recorder’s Office. I am here today with Betty to discuss revenues that have been collected in our office so far, as well as to give you an estimate of how much money our office will contribute toward the General Fund by the end of the year. From January 1 through July 31, 2006, our office has recorded a total of 26,554 documents. Last year, through that same time period, we recorded a total of 23,304 documents, meaning we have recorded an increase of 3,250 documents compared with the same time last year. Ideally we would liked to have seen that increase average out over the entire seven month period, but that was not the case. Old National Bank gave our office a big boost in revenues in January when they submitted 3,000 assignment of mortgages in that one month alone. An assignment of mortgage basically means they sold mortgages to another bank. To put that into perspective, we averaged 3,457 documents per month from February through July and in January we recorded 5,813 documents. Therefore, if you take away that bulk shipment of documents recorded in our office for just one customer, we have recorded almost an identical amount of documents from one year to the next. We, regarding total revenues collected in our office, we are $72,005 above last year’s pace. That major increase in revenues can be credited toward the 3,000 assignments we recorded for Old National Bank in January as well as a new fee that took effect at the beginning of the year. A new law regarding the recording of social security numbers took effect beginning January 1 of this year and it has greatly affected our office in terms of revenues and procedures. The state legislature passed a new law forbidding the recording of social security numbers unless that social security number is required by law to be on the document. Examples of documents that require a social security number include a federal tax lien or a soldier discharge or death certificate. The law also established a new form called County Form 170 and that took effect January 1 of this year. The form was to be attached to every document recorded in our office and costs $2.00. The revenues from that form have been placed in the Security I.D. Protection Fund which was established with the Vanderburgh County Auditor’s Office. The Security I.D. Protection Fund is to be used by the Recorder’s Office to purchase, upgrade, implement and maintain software that will redact or obscure social security numbers that have been scanned into our records. We will collect this fee and place the revenues into the Security I.D. Protection Fund until June 30, 2011. As the law reads now, any leftover money in that fund will remain there after that date. That money will remain in order to be used for redaction software. Beginning July 1, 2011 however, the $2.00 fee will be deposited into the General Fund, so July 1, 2011 you’ll see a bigger increase in the General Fund monies that we give you. Beginning January 1, 2008, to the extent possible, no recorded documents can be disclosed for public inspection until it has been searched by the redacting technology. County Form 170 took some time for title search companies and the lending institutions to get accustomed to, but by around March, just about every document was submitted to our office and had the form attached without any problems. That’s when the Governor stepped in. On March 29^th he decided to do away with County Form 170. He instead instituted a $2.00 fee increase effective immediately. County Form 170 is now no longer necessary to record a document. Instead, an affirmation statement basically stating that no social security numbers have been recorded is now required by law to be on every document. Now $2.00 of each document still goes into the Security I.D. Protection Fund. From January 1 through July 31^st of this year, we have collected $53,296 toward the Security I.D. Protection Fund. We are now in our second year of collecting the State Mortgage Fund fee. Beginning in 2005, a state law went into effect requiring the Recorder’s Office to charge an additional $3.00 fee for each mortgage recorded in our office toward this fund. Fifty cents of the $3.00 fee goes towards the Recorder’s Perpetuation account and the remaining $2.50 goes to the State Auditor who distributes $1.25 to the state General Fund and $1.25 to the Homeowner Protection Unit account. The Homeowner Protection Unit, according to state law, was established to investigate deceptive acts in connection with mortgage lending. The Homeowner Protection Unit also will cooperate with the Indiana Housing Authority in the development and implementation of the Home Ownership Education program established by law. Through July 31^st of this year, we have collected $15,595 for the State Mortgage fund. That is slightly less than last year when we collected $16,687.50 toward that fund. That brings us to our final three funds. The Surveyor’s Perpetuation Fund, which was established by an act of Congress, states that for every deed recorded in our office, $5.00 must go towards the Surveyor’s Perpetuation Fund. From January 1 through July 31^st of this year, the Surveyor’s Perpetuation Fund has received $24,240 compared to $23,980 during that same time period last year. The Recorder’s Perpetuation Fund has collected $172,984 from the first of January through the end of July this year, up from $165,419.50 during that same time span last year. Three dollars of every document recorded in our office goes towards this fund. A majority of the Recorder’s Perpetuation Fund also comes from the sale of copies made in our office. Through July 31^st of this year, we have received $89,078 in copy revenues compared to $90,973 during that same time period last year. The Indiana state legislature has set the price of a copy at $1.00 a page in the County Recorder’s Office. It is worth noting that all of our supplies and computer costs are paid for out of the Recorder’s Perpetuation account. And now the fund you guys are all interested in, the county General Fund. From January 1 through July 31^st of this year, we have collected $338,925 towards the General Fund. That amount is $11,977 more than we collected last year when we had collected $326,948 towards the fund. I would like to remind everyone that all of the revenues that we collect in the Vanderburgh County Recorder’s Office are from user fees. If you do not use the services of our office, you have not paid towards any of the funds that I have just mentioned. In fact, as you know, the General Fund pays the salaries of all 11 full-time employees in the Vanderburgh County Recorder’s Office at a price of $41