VANDERBURGH COUNTY COUNCIL

BUDGET HEARINGS

AUGUST 14, 2007

The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 14^th day of August, 2007 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 9:00 a.m. by County Council President Marsha Abell.

President Abell: I would like to call to order the budget hearings for 2008, being held on August 14, 2007. Councilman Leader, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

(Pledge of Allegiance was given)

President Abell: We have a couple of housekeeping duties that we would like to take care of before we get started this morning. I would like to ask that all officeholders who intend to present this morning be prepared to answer questions about any new hires, any new budget item, and any budget item that is substantially more than it was last year.

 President Abell: We also this morning would like to address, we had a request from Mr. David Coker, who is in the audience this morning, regarding our support of a review panel for property taxes at the state-wide level. The Governor has begun something to that effect. We have prepared a resolution. I’m going to ask Mr. Winnecke to read it into the record, and with the approval of the Council we would all sign off on this resolution.

Councilmember Winnecke: Thank you, Madam President. The resolution states:

“Whereas, the citizens of Vanderburgh County have expressed concern about the current state of property tax assessments in Vanderburgh County in the State of Indiana; and, Whereas, over 9,100 appeals have been filed by Vanderburgh County residents to appeal their assessments under the new formula and tax structure; and,

Whereas, the Vanderburgh County Council believes it is in the best interest of the citizens of Vanderburgh County for it to request that the state expand the role of the Shepard-Kernan Commission to also include making recommendations on developing a fair and equitable tax structure and/or to request that the Governor appoint a separate commission to focus on the tax structure.

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the County Council of Vanderburgh County, Indiana, that the Council endorses the concept of either expanding the role of the Shepard-Kernan Commission to also include making recommendations on how to develop a fair and equitable tax structure across all categories of property owners and/or that the Governor appoint a separate state commission to focus on the tax structure.”

I would make that in the form of a motion.

President Abell: Do I hear a second?

Councilmember Goebel: Second.

President Abell: Roll call vote, please.

Teri Lukeman: Councilmember Sutton?

Councilmember Sutton: Yes.

Teri Lukeman: Councilmember Leader?

Councilmember Leader: Yes.

Teri Lukeman: Councilmember Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Yes.

Teri Lukeman: Councilmember Goebel?

Councilmember Goebel: Yes.

Teri Lukeman: Councilmember Raben?

Councilmember Raben: Yes.

Teri Lukeman: Councilmember Winnecke?

Councilmember Winnecke: Yes.

Teri Lukeman: President Abell?

President Abell: Yes.

(Motion unanimously approved 7-0)

President Abell: The resolution passes. For the record, the resolution is not an ordinance of the county, and was not taken up on a normal day of business. There is an original up here that we have for everyone to sign. Be sure you sign it before you leave.

President Abell: I would also like to call to your attention a letter that I sent out to all the county officeholders. It actually, probably, just got to them late yesterday or early this morning, because I was late getting it down here, but it virtually asks all of them to help us participate in the cutting of this budget, which will be approximately ten million dollars, and I would ask that those county officeholders and department heads that are in the office, in the audience this morning, if you have not seen the memo, please be sure you read it and understand that we have a very difficult job ahead of us. We’re not trying to cut your department down to where you can’t function, but we also have to make sure that we keep this budget in line. I think all of us have heard the cries of the taxpayers this year pretty loud and clear. I would like to mention that on Good Morning America this morning there was a man from Indianapolis who paid his property tax bill of some $12,000 in one dollar bills, and it shut down the Treasurer’s office while they actually counted it yesterday. So, that gives you an idea of how angry people are about their property taxes, so, we have to keep this budget in line. With that said, the first person on our agenda this morning is Weights and Measures. Loretta?

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES

President Abell: Good morning.

Loretta Townsend: Good morning.

President Abell: Does anyone have any questions of Loretta about her budget, which is always well prepared. Thank you.

Loretta Townsend: Thank you. This is scary. Somebody ask me something.

President Abell: Everybody’s just smiling at you.

Loretta Townsend: Uh-huh.

President Abell: Beware.

Loretta Townsend: Right on.

President Abell: Mr. Winnecke?

Councilmember Winnecke: Thank you. Loretta, could you chat about the uniform line item?

Loretta Townsend: Okay. The uniform line item, well, that will vary from time to time, because we’re in, well, like yesterday we were in diesel most of the time, we were in dyno fuel, which is what they mix with whatever to make dynamite for the mines. We’re in that, and all those will take a toll on our uniforms. You know, it’s not like we’re out riding in a car, or we’re carrying a clip board and this type of thing. We’re in diesel, we’re in gas, and when we get into the scales sometimes we’re getting into farm chemicals and that type of thing. There’s just so much that Spray ‘n Wash will take out, you know. So, I mean, that’s why. It could vary. I mean, their hats get so bad, I mean, really bad.

Councilmember Winnecke: Okay.

Loretta Townsend: The total increases is five line items. That’s the total of that is less than $2,000 for the five line items. Like one’s a hundred dollars more for rent next year. Just a little bit more, I think there’s some more added in training, because they’ve had training schools and travel and stuff that we really didn’t go to because there was no money for it that we should have probably have gone to. Ours aren’t really expensive training schools. I mean, they’re held in the state office, or they’re held somewhere like that, but we didn’t have the money to do it. I’m not saying that we even have to go this next year, but to cover it–

Councilmember Winnecke: The other question I had was regarding the communication line. That has gone up significantly, not just over the last two or three years from a couple hundred dollars a year to now you’re requesting $1,200.

Loretta Townsend: Well, we don’t, I really don’t, Lloyd, it’s like a stab in the dark. That computer, that’s hooking up to the Civic Center. I don’t have any idea what this is going to cost us. I’m just like asking for enough to hope it covers. We don’t know what the telephone is going to be, when they get through with us. I mean, we just, like I said, it’s just sort of a stab in the dark as to what we really will need. Maybe we won’t need all that. We may need more, but we don’t know.

Councilmember Winnecke: Is it for any other, it’s strictly just for computers?

Loretta Townsend: Let’s see. Out of communications, we have a telephone line item, so, no, it shouldn’t be that. It will mostly be, yes, that and, I think, I’m pretty sure, that without having the book in front of me, that’s our cell phones, the three cell phones that we have. One for each vehicle.

Councilmember Raben: I might, Loretta, that might be part of your high speed now. I think–

Loretta Townsend: It could be. They told us nothing.

Councilmember Raben: Up until a few months ago she was basically on like dial up. So, I think that’s the difference.

Loretta Townsend: The price end of it, they told us nothing. They just brought our tower back to us yesterday from over here. They’ve had that. You know, we’re trying to clean it up. The computer is almost nine years old. The only reason I think they probably let us have that computer was because it wasn’t turned over in 2000, because the other one we bought in 1990. So, that may be something that I have to come back and ask for later. I don’t know. We’re trying to make it work, but–

President Abell: I don’t see a computer on here.

Loretta Townsend: No.

President Abell: Okay.

Loretta Townsend: No, it’s not on there right now. We’re hoping that will work. You know, I almost asked, or did turn in for a transfer of funds to take care of our copy machine. Well, the computer guys come over there, and they’re messing with our computer, and we start laughing. We say, hey, the fax machine here don’t work. I said, the copy machine’s sitting in there, it’s so old, we can’t even get parts for it. The only thing we could do was haul it down to Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and I said, I don’t think that will work, you know. So, they got some kind of part, and they’ve got it up and running for us.

President Abell: Okay.

Loretta Townsend: So, I mean, we’ve just got machines over there that we’ve had for a long time. As long as they work, we don’t have to have the latest of anything. You know, like we don’t have to have 17 inch monitors.

Councilmember Sutton: Some of us say amen.

Loretta Townsend: 17 or 19 inch, we really don’t know what to give them–

Councilmember Winnecke: I would just like the record to reflect that I was not the first to talk about the size of monitors.

Loretta Townsend: If it’s one we can see, I don’t care if it’s ten inch, I mean, it works.

Councilmember Sutton: Say, Loretta, on your high speed update that you’re going through, have they given you a time frame regarding when they intend to complete that?

Loretta Townsend: All of it’s going to be done, well, no, now they say it’s AT&T again. Of course, AT&T did discover that the hole in the ground was not for our department. First they say, you know, it was our department, that there was a manhole that someone had covered up with asphalt. Well, Curt John came over there, and, I said, come here, Curt, let me show you something. Our back wall of our big room, right on the other side of that wooden wall, is all the equipment for the internet and for the telephones. There’s no manhole. The manhole actually was out there at WIC on Fulton Avenue, and AT&T sort of got that screwed around in their mind. So, I don’t know when we’re going to get it.

Councilmember Sutton: And, computer services is leading this project for you?

Loretta Townsend: Yeah.

Councilmember Sutton: Alright. Alright.

President Abell: Who have you been dealing with?

Councilmember Sutton: If you can get some idea on...yeah, who you are working with.

President Abell: Who are you working with?

Loretta Townsend: Okay, John Staples has been very, very kind to us. There’s one, let’s see, Chance, Jay, Mark, Matt, what’s his name?

President Abell: Arvay?

Loretta Townsend: Arvay. Now, he’s never been over, but I think everybody else they have on the payroll’s been over there.

President Abell: Maybe, Mr. Sutton, we can address that when they are in front of us?

Councilmember Sutton: Right. Yeah, we can, we might be able to get that squared away. We can find out what your time table is on completion, because this may not be something that...if it’s a one time charge, maybe you don’t need to necessarily reflect that–

Loretta Townsend: I have no idea if it’s even going to be a month.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay.

Loretta Townsend: You know, they just can’t seem to...they’re hooking us up to the Civic Center. I mean, it’s, we don’t, if we get more money than what we need, you’re going to get it back. I mean, you know, it’s like, I mean, we’re not going to blow it or put in something new or something that we don’t need.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, we don’t want you to have to just kind of guess at this thing.

Loretta Townsend: Yeah, well.

Councilmember Sutton: So, maybe we can get you some information to help you to get down to the number to where we really need to be.

Loretta Townsend: Yeah, how much it is a month. I mean, you know, we keep getting different prices. I mean, I know I’ve got to put something down. I mean, that’s just like building the Centre and forgot to think their budget out, you know, for the coming year. I mean, I’ve got to put something down.

President Abell: I mean, I’m with Mr. Sutton, I think we’ll talk to Mr. Arvay when he’s in front of us and get some ideas. I’ve written that down also, so.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay.

President Abell: Anything else, Mr. Sutton?

Councilmember Sutton: That’s it.

President Abell: Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, could you enlighten me a little bit with regards to the rent line? Where you’re located? How much square footage you have? And, the reason and the purpose of being located outside the Civic Center or whatever?

Loretta Townsend: Okay, there’s a lot of reasons, Tom. Number one, our rent will be, let’s see, we pay, it goes up a hundred dollars next year. Well, that’s the price that we got from Joe before he resigned. Let me find rent. Okay, it will go from $5,600 to $5,700. We have 1,000 square feet. We can go and come as we need to, which is what we do all day long. We have three vehicles that have a lot of expensive equipment in them; weights, test measures. Test measures are like maybe $700-$800 a piece. We cannot have anything happen to this, because we cannot replace them locally. We’ve got to have it to do our job. We have a hundred gallon prover that we do diesel, we’re going to the airport again tomorrow, out at Tri-State on their trucks that they fuel up the airplanes. We have weights in there, a 50 pound weight would cost you about at a hundred dollars a piece. We’ve got to have these things close to us, they set in the lot that has a locked gate, I’ve gone by there at 5:30 and it’s been locked, but it is locked during the night, there are cameras there, there’s lights there, they have security there. We have ample room for what we need in our office. People can pull up out front, bring us their scales, bring us their stuff in there to us, and it works out. As I look down through the budget from the combined city and county, there’s no one in there that’s got rent like that, anywhere. I’m looking along that budget thing, it was $17,000, $18,000 a year, and more than that, $50,000, $60,000 a year. Ours will be $5,700.

Councilmember Shetler: Are there other costs though that are associated–

Loretta Townsend: None.

Councilmember Shetler: –like when we go outside with communications, and computers? And, then when a printer goes down, or copier goes down and you don’t have access to one there–

Loretta Townsend: We’ve got neighbors. We have neighbors is what we rely on. Yeah, we don’t come over here to get things printed up. The only times we come over here is like for this, and for, well, bringing our bills, checking our mailboxes and that type of thing. We have no need to. I mean, people can get to us. You know here you can’t even, well, I had them drop me off here because there’s nowhere to even park there outside.

Councilmember Leader: Loretta, you might want to comment on the kind of people that bring that equipment to your space, and how much it weighs and that kind of thing, which is important to your location.

Loretta Townsend: We have had people, well, we do have people who will bring scales to us. We’re talking about electronic scales. We’re talking about bigger scales. They have brought actually gasoline delivery trucks have pulled up there where we’ve had to reseal them, because they had to change the printer or something like that on it. There’s times that we, okay, and another thing, that I know you don’t want to hear, and we could not have it hardly anyplace else. Once a year, they come down and they test everybody’s test measures, the five gallon gas cans, I call them. The state don’t like it, but it’s a gas can, and, of course, there’s going to be fumes and things like that in it, and the ones that can’t be there that day, they will bring them to us ahead of time, and, of course, we bring them in there in our office. We tell them to wash them out, but, you’re dealing with people that sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, so that we can take them out to the firehouse on Kentucky Avenue, the state metrologist comes down and he checks their equipment. The reason for that is, the State of Indiana does not have any control over repair people. With our ordinance, we do. We have to have. We don’t want an idiot running loose out there with a dented can. What we do, every so often we have the keys to locks we made, and only the ones who have their equipment checked and certified are going to get a key to unlock those locks. That helps the other people too, because they don’t want to have to pay $400 to get a pump fixed, and then the guy is not any good at doing it.

President Abell: Do you have another question, Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, just a couple.

President Abell: I would caution you that we need to move on.

Councilmember Shetler: Right.

President Abell: But, go ahead.

Councilmember Shetler: Just to follow up on that–

Loretta Townsend: Uh-huh.

Councilmember Shetler: –it sounds to me the things you’re describing though really don’t seem to be conducive to an office environment. Perhaps a fuel location–

Loretta Townsend: Not the County Garage.

Councilmember Shetler: –that’s owned by the county probably sounds to me to be a lot more practical and something that wouldn’t cost the county additional dollars. So, thank you.

Loretta Townsend: No more so than what it would for the rest of them at the high buck office, the high dollar office. Locate it to where the people can get to us.

Councilmember Raben: I have a question.

President Abell: Yes, Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: Loretta, how many square feet did you say you have?

Loretta Townsend: A thousand.

Councilmember Raben: A thousand? So, that’s $5.70 a foot.

Loretta Townsend: Yeah.

Councilmember Raben: I think we’re being charged here, within the Civic Center, about–

Loretta Townsend: Oh, big bucks.

Councilmember Raben: –for everyone’s information, it’s $15 or $16 a foot. Hers does pay for utilities–

Loretta Townsend: Uh-huh, parking and everything else. It pays for everything. That’s the only thing we have.

Councilmember Raben: It’s a bargain.

Loretta Townsend: Yeah.

President Abell: Anything else? Thank you, Loretta.

COUNTY TREASURER

President Abell: County Treasurer, page 10. Good morning, Mrs. Tuley.

Z. Tuley: Good morning. I’m Z. Tuley, the Vanderburgh County Treasurer.

President Abell: Do you have something that you would like to tell us? Or, do you just want us to ask you questions? You passed out some things.

Z. Tuley: I would. I would like to discuss this for a minute.

President Abell: Okay, go ahead.

Z. Tuley: Loretta, I think this is yours.

Loretta Townsend: Okay, thank you.

Z. Tuley: I think it was about a year ago, March or February or so, we hired a collection company to assist us with the delinquent personal property, mobile home, oil and state assessed tax collections that once we’ve exhausted every means possible to try to collect this, we are required to certify those to the County Clerk. Once they are certified to the County Clerk, we turn this over to this collection agent, who then charges a fee directly to the delinquent offender. So, it’s not costing the Vanderburgh County taxpayers anything to have these guys contract. I have submitted a couple of documents to you so that you can see the amount of increase in ‘05. No, it was ‘06 from like March to March. From ‘05 to ‘06, from March to March we collected, on our own in the office about three hundred and some thousand dollars. With this collection company the year after that, in that same time frame, they collected right at a million. So, I think that the collection agent is doing a very, very fine job in getting monies that was so difficult for my staff to have to try and track down these people and try to find them and try to get them to pay. So, I did want to report that that’s working out very, very well. The other thing, this other chart, the green one shows the amount of volume, the number of bills that we’re having to process, because with this increase of being three times what it used to be, we have three times the paper work. We have three times the posting that needs to be done. We have three times of all this. In the past, one person could handle, you know, in this April of 2005, 50 bills, then 55 bills, then 31 bills. But, now in this same period, in ‘06, we have 118. So, the staff has been really stretched and swamped in order to just even keep up with this volume. I did want to point that out as well. We have been working extremely hard. It’s bringing in good for Vanderburgh, but at the same time, it is a real strain on us. With this increase I would like to request and encourage the idea of getting a new tax and billing system. With what we have now is an old COBOL program. It’s been maxed. We can’t currently put in the new state required parcel numbering system, because it is so antiquated and it has just been utilized to it’s fullest. There is no room to add those numbers in the system. I think that this shows that we have new monies coming in, that we didn’t used to be able to get. So, I would like to have some consideration going toward paying for a new tax and billing system. This process could also be shortened if it wasn’t having to do so much manual work. Right now we have manual books, as prescribed by the State Board of Accounts. They’re great big, huge, heavy books. There’s one on record in my office. There’s one on record in the County Clerk’s office, and all payments are manually logged into this book. If we could get it up on a tax and billing computer system, where when the cashier rings in the payment, it goes to the spot that it’s supposed to go, in electronic form. Then over to the County Clerk’s office. I have all kinds of ideas. I have served the last two years on the board for the DLGF, under O’Bannon-Kernan. I served for Beth Hinkle in reviewing a more uniform tax and billing system between the Auditor, the Treasurer and the Assessor, so that there wasn’t so much repeat work, but not eliminating too much checks and balances. I served also under our current Governor with Melissa Henson at the helm of the DLGF last year. We did wrap that up and we do have a final draft. I think it’s very exciting. I had actually kind of hoped that the standard would be set a little bit higher, but it’s a standard that 92 counties are going to have to meet.

President Abell: Have you discussed that desire for a new system with Mr. Arvay?

Z. Tuley: Yes. Before, but we had a sit down meeting about it yesterday. I’ve discussed it before with him.

President Abell: I guess, when you four come to a consensus, you’ll come to us with some funding requests? Okay. Does anyone have any questions of Mrs. Tuley? Mr. Sutton?

Councilmember Sutton: Z., regarding that new system, is this a system that is used or being piloted some place else? Or is this something that–

Z. Tuley: There are various vendors that will be certified by the state, but now with this new standard set, you are going to have to be certified by the state. You’re not going to be able to just be a package that a county can just run out and purchase. You’re going to have to find someone that meets that standard, so that the state will certify those and say this vendor is good, this vendor is good, and then you have to just find the niche for your own county.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay, and how many counties that you’re aware of have already–

Z. Tuley: Marion County just acquired one–

Councilmember Sutton: –purchased their system?

Z. Tuley: –White County acquired one. I’m thinking, and I could be wrong, I’m thinking Monroe County already met the standard. That’s all I can think of right now.

Councilmember Sutton: And, your cut off date of when this needs to be put in place?

Z. Tuley: During the last meeting, the last thing I understood was at that point in time, they were expecting that all counties be searching, seeking, looking with kind of a plan in place in ‘08. Going toward that uniform standard. And, of course, now we have a new DLGF director and she may want to step it up, and she may want to postpone it. I don’t know.

Councilmember Sutton: And, just a ballpark figure on the system cost again?

Z. Tuley: I have no idea.

President Abell: None at all?

Z. Tuley: I really don’t. I haven’t searched that far. I did tell Matt that I’m just certain that a good tax and billing system is in Hawaii, and we need to run out there and look at it.

Councilmember Sutton: It will take about three weeks to evaluate it.

Z. Tuley: Exactly. Exactly, it takes a few weeks to evaluate. I really don’t know. I haven’t got to that kind of....it’s also going to have to be something that I feel can be supported by the current computer staff. Because I have heard the nightmares around the counties that have companies that are only reachable by 1-800 we put you on hold, 1-800 you can sit. I can tell you we have, our tax and billing system, the current one, has only went down once in my 13 years here. We had five men on the spot, the taxpayers could see that they were in line, backed up to Bill’s door, it was at tax deadline time, but we had five men in my office, in five minutes they had us back up and going. I don’t think that our taxpayers deserve any less. I’m not happy with a 1-800, and I don’t think our taxpayers would be either if they’re here to pay and they have to get turned away because I can’t provide a receipt.

Councilmember Sutton: It would be nice if the state just purchased that system themselves and then each county could just either remotely, some kind of way or another tap into the system–

Z. Tuley: Kind of, but have you noticed–

Councilmember Sutton: –where each county wouldn’t have to–

Z. Tuley: Yeah.

Councilmember Sutton: –go in and purchase it. Where you’ve got a uniform vendor, and if there’s any bugs or problems with the systems, then you’ve got that system already–

Z. Tuley: If they brought that DLGF board back together to make that choice, I would love that. But, just to have someone up at the state make that choice, who has no involvement would be scary. Because they usually don’t catch all the details. Exactly.

President Abell: Mrs. Leader, did you have a question?

Councilmember Leader: (Inaudible.)

President Abell: Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, Z., you mentioned about the tax collecting firm, the delinquent tax collections that we’ve been catching up on and stuff?

Z. Tuley: Yeah, this is just the personal property, mobile homes, state assessed and oil.

Councilmember Shetler: Right.

Z. Tuley: This has nothing to do with real estate.

Councilmember Shetler: Okay, so the person that you have here that collects the delinquent, that’s real estate then? Is that different?

Z. Tuley: It’s different. It’s a totally separate category.

Councilmember Shetler: Okay, I mean, that person that does that, that’s different from what they’re doing here?

Z. Tuley: Well, we have a tax sale clerk to worry about delinquent real estate.

Councilmember Shetler: Right, and that’s all that person does? It’s your employee listed here?

Z. Tuley: Pretty much.

Councilmember Shetler: Okay, alright, thank you.

Z. Tuley: Uh-huh.

President Abell: Mr. Winnecke?

Councilmember Winnecke: Z., it might be helpful for us in the next couple of weeks, as we’re trying to pare things down, if you can get a ballpark of what we’re talking about for a new tax and billing system, just so we kind of, for our planning purposes. I mean, it doesn’t have to be to the penny, but be, I would like to know about what we’re talking about.

Z. Tuley: Okay. I’ll get with Matt and we’ll take a look at some things.

President Abell: Mr. Raben? I’m sorry, go ahead. Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: I was just going to offer recommendations. Sometimes when it comes to programs and software it’s not your advantage to be the pioneer. You might want to wait a year or two and find out from other counties. After they–

Z. Tuley: I want to see what Marion has.

Councilmember Raben: –you know, some systems–

Z. Tuley: I would love to see that.

Councilmember Raben: –will undoubtably fail, and you’ll find that there’s one that really works. But, to react too quick may be not to our advantage, so.

Z. Tuley: I agree. I agree. I would love to see what Marion County has in place. I would like to see what it looks like, how it works. Have they encompassed the certification process so that they don’t have to do the antiquated book method? I would love to see what White County has. White County I’m familiar with the company, and I would like to see what all they have, because I really don’t know. But, I would like to see that. White County just got it in place.

President Abell: Any other questions?

Councilmember Sutton: I know we’re trying to move on as fast as we can, but I want to ask a question. I think I’m going to try to ask to every officeholder that’s asking for some type of increase. Z., often times the Council we get some feedback from the officeholders and we make adjustments to their budget. Looking at your request here, if you were going to go in and make some adjustments to your budget, where would you start?

Z. Tuley: Nowhere.

Councilmember Sutton: With ten million dollars to cut, that’s not a good answer.

Councilmember Raben: A good question though.

Z. Tuley: I started to say, you might could get by with taking a smidgen off of each one, each category. Maybe a smidgen. I really, really would be saddened to lose any kind of training. The printing, you know, the cost of the bills have went up with the volume of the bills that’s went up. We’re up to like 100,000 parcels, or right at it now. The cost of that just keeps going up. Unless our legislators decide that instead of inserting the COLTS form, the comparison form, if we can just have that on the internet. It’s been proposed. It was shot down. I believe it was last year we discussed some information being on the internet, and our legislators are not real receptive to any of that. We have public libraries that have public access. It wouldn’t be necessary to stuff all of these inserts in a tax bill, which increases the postage as well, if we could just do the internet. Unless we can make some kind of major push toward that effort, I don’t know how we can reduce–

Councilmember Sutton: I know you weren’t expecting that question, and you happen to be the first one. So, the others out there, they will be ready for it when they come up.

Z. Tuley: Yeah, I don’t know.

President Abell: Any other questions?

Councilmember Raben: One last one. Z., on your First Deputy Accounting ADM, there’s quite a large increase on the salary, is that step increases or?

Z. Tuley: This was a total rewrite of the job description. I required that of my entire staff. They were all sent to training, or with new hires I brought in an elevated skill level that was going to be required. Although I still feel that the salaries came up short, from what I believe that the employees deserve, we did get some increases passed. Much needed increases.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. That’s it.

President Abell: Thank you.

Z. Tuley: Uh-huh.

CO-OP EXTENSION SERVICE

President Abell: Co-Op Extension Service, page 76. Good morning.

Susan Plassmeier: Good morning. I’m Susan Plassmeier with Purdue Extension here in Vanderburgh County. Do you want me to go over my rationales? Or, do you just want me to take questions?

President Abell: If you have any major changes from last year, you might want to explain those.

Susan Plassmeier: Um, just, we asked for an additional $500 in office supplies. That just being the cost of office supplies increasing, with transportation costs increasing, that kind of gets passed on to the consumers. Our travel/mileage, when the county increased the mileage rate a few years ago, we did not increase any in our mileage budget, and, so, for the last few years we’ve asked for an additional $1,000 in that line item for the last three years. What’s happened at the end of the year, we’ve just kind of held off on our budget, mileage, and then got it submitted at the beginning of the year. So, we’re kind of taking advantage of the next year’s budget. So, it kind of leaves us short every year. But, I will get to Mr. Sutton’s question, that might be a category that could be cut, because we do have one of our, if we could at least get $500 in there, we do have one of our program assistants who’s pregnant. So, she will be due at the end of the year, and, so, she will not be going out doing programming, and she does a lot of school programming. So, she’ll be out for a couple of months. So, that will decrease the mileage a little bit of what we need. Our utilities, asking for an increase of $1,000. Just the same thing, energy costs are increasing, so, we anticipate that what we have in our budget, and that line has been pretty steady over the last few years, that we’ll probably need more money there. Our contractual services, that is the amount the county pays to Purdue University to maintain the employment for three Purdue educators, masters degree educators here in Vanderburgh County. I did get something from Purdue, for Vanderburgh County, Purdue pays 68.8 percent of salaries and benefits, and our county is paying 31.2 percent. For the average down in Southwestern Indiana, Purdue is paying 62 percent, and the county is paying 38 percent. So, Vanderburgh County is only paying 31.2 percent compared to other counties on that amount.

President Abell: Any questions?

Councilmember Leader: I have one, Marsha.

President Abell: Mrs. Leader?

Councilmember Leader: This payment to Purdue?

Susan Plassmeier: Yes.

Councilmember Leader: Is that dictated by Purdue? That $71,000?

Susan Plassmeier: Yes.

Councilmember Leader: Thank you.

President Abell: Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, okay, the $5,400, how many computers are you talking about there?

Susan Plassmeier: Eight. It’s computers and a printer also.

President Abell: This is not to replace them, obviously?

Susan Plassmeier: No, this is a lease.

President Abell: Oh.

Susan Plassmeier: We do a three year lease.

Councilmember Shetler: It’s a contractual service? That is what the payment is going to be per month divided out?

Susan Plassmeier: Right.

Councilmember Shetler: Okay. Rent, so, as not to, how many square feet are we talking about?

Susan Plassmeier: I knew you would ask that when you asked Loretta that. I’m not sure.

Councilmember Shetler: Can you get that for us, please?

Susan Plassmeier: Yes, I will. I’ll get that and get it back to Sandie.

Councilmember Shetler: Janitorial Service, while it seems to be fairly inexpensive, $1,000 a month.

Susan Plassmeier: No.

Councilmember Shetler: Or, a hundred dollars a month.

Susan Plassmeier: $1,200 for a year.

Councilmember Shetler: A hundred dollars month seems to be fairly inexpensive. Is that for an outside contractual service that you’re using?

Susan Plassmeier: Yes.

Councilmember Shetler: I think I had one other question on the Office Machines at the $1,500. How is that different, that line item from the computer?

Susan Plassmeier: Office Machines would be other types of machines that we might need. We have purchased in past, we’ve got a laminator that we use, because we go and we do a lot of school programs, and we’ve got materials that we use repeatedly on flannel boards, and so we laminate those materials so that they don’t deteriorate. For other small, that was probably our largest machine that we’ve purchased, but, I think we used a couple of years from the line item to do that. But, it’s just smaller machines like that. It could be a typewriter, which we really need to get a new typewriter, which are kind of hard to find. Everything is done by computer now, but there are some forms that we have to fill out that you need a typewriter. So, but the last typewriters that we bought new were when we were still here in the Civic Center, and that was back before 1996.

President Abell: You might check the basement.

Susan Plassmeier: We have gotten some from the basement to replace what we’ve had when some have gone bad. The ones we have they like, and they wish that we could replace them.

Councilmember Shetler: Is any of that for like maintenance agreements?

Susan Plassmeier: Equipment Repair would be the maintenance agreements.

Councilmember Shetler: Okay.

President Abell: Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: Yes, I would like to go back to computers just a moment. You said you have how many, eight?

Susan Plassmeier: That are hooked, well, we have more than that, but, these are the ones that are hooked up to the internet serviced by Purdue.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. So, the $5,400 though is for leasing eight? Or is that for leasing more?

Susan Plassmeier: For leasing eight, and the printer, laser printer.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, you know, that would figure out to be, I mean, pretty close to $700 a year per computer. Now, you can replace a computer today with a printer and with a monitor for less than $700. I mean, it would be much cheaper to own than lease.

Susan Plassmeier: But, I think that also figures in some of their contractual maintenance. We don’t use any of the county computer system for maintenance and things. Ours is all done through Purdue. That’s all the software that’s included with that to run our 4-H programs, the master program, and they take care of maintenance on that, and if we have any problems, we just call up there to Purdue and they go in internally and fix things. So, we have very little down time. Did that answer your question, I’m sorry.

Councilmember Raben: Well, it does. I guess, it’s hard to place a value on the software. I mean, if they’re changing the software annually then, you know, that would definitely have a value. But, simply for the hardware side of it, that’s pretty excessive.

Susan Plassmeier: Right.

Councilmember Raben: If you could afford to replace computers every three years and save several thousand dollars–

Susan Plassmeier: We have the IT service and the high speed T-1 line in there, too.

Councilmember Raben: And everyone throughout the state uses a lease program through Purdue?

Susan Plassmeier: Yes, yes.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, so, is it possible just to get on their software program?

Susan Plassmeier: No. That was a thing, we have at the end of the last lease cycle, a couple of lease cycles ago they offered the option that we could buy any used or left over that we didn’t turn it in to lease and we could pay like $150. So, we did keep a computer, but they will not service that computer. So, I’m afraid that if we buy some externally, then Purdue would not be liable to service them if they have, you know, the problems or anything. If we got like a part that goes out, we just call Purdue, they mail it to us, they ship it to us, and, I mean, that’s just covered in all the cost of that.

Councilmember Raben: I’m not so much concerned about, again, the hardware, because computers, again, they’re cheap enough that if you have to replace them every three years, if you have a new system or a new computer, the likelihood of it failing in the first year or two is–

Susan Plassmeier: Right, and that’s why–

Councilmember Raben: –not very high.

Susan Plassmeier: –every three years is because they said usually you don’t have problems within the first three years. So, that’s why they built the lease on the three year agreement.

Councilmember Raben: And it’s $700 a computer. Again, if you could get us what it costs for them to maintain your software, I think at some point we need to look at buying and owning our own hardware.

Councilmember Sutton: And we could very well maintain the hardware through our computer services area ourselves, if we go that route. I mean, if we’re in a lease agreement with Purdue in perpetuity, it’s a pretty good deal for them. Not necessarily for us, though.

President Abell: We need to change the tape. Just a moment, Mr. Goebel. Just as soon as we get finished.

TAPE CHANGED

President Abell: We might discuss that with Mr. Arvay when he’s in front of us also. Mr. Goebel?

Councilmember Goebel: Could you just find out from Purdue if we could go the separate route and purchase our own and they could still pipeline the software to you?

Susan Plassmeier: The services?

Councilmember Goebel: Yes.

Susan Plassmeier: Yes, I will check into that.

Councilmember Goebel: Thank you.

President Abell: Any other questions? Thank you.

COUNTY CLERK

President Abell: County Clerk, page 1. Good morning.

Susan Kirk: Good morning. Susan Kirk, County Clerk.

President Abell: I think we can probably skip all the way over to page four, actually, where the – does anyone have any questions of Ms. Kirk?

Councilmember Leader: I do. Susan, let me ask you about this Office Supplies line. You’ve got a pretty dramatic increase there. Can you explain that to us, please?

Susan Kirk: Well, just because of the forms and things that we need are going up. They keep going up and we could maybe shave a couple of thousand off of that, but I think, otherwise, we would be back at Council asking for more money. We have certain required forms that we have to get, that we get from these different companies. Its not like, you know, sending it out for bids. There’s certain companies that print our forms and they just go up. So, unfortunately, we are kind of stuck with some of that.

President Abell: Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: So you’re saying that on that printing, we don’t get bids compared to –

Susan Kirk: It depends on what it is, Tom. If it’s something that’s just, you know, your normal run of the mill, but you know, like our certified postage, things like that, we have to go through like Pitney-Bowes and they’re just increasing, costs are increasing.

Councilmember Shetler: But there are different, you’re talking about the –

Susan Kirk: There is and we do.

Councilmember Shetler: Postage machines and stuff like that, because there are several competitors out there on that.

Susan Kirk: Well, and when we do that, we will get bids among them but they’re very close in price, very close. And all of them are going up so its not like one is, one isn’t.

Councilmember Shetler: And we have found a fairly significant difference between one versus the other, ourselves.

Susan Kirk: Well, we’ve not found that much difference to actually move, because, and sometimes when you think about the move and the start-up costs of getting another one, you’re right back in the same place. I think Royce brought up a real good point the last time I was here about how you get with someone and you keep using them and then you find your costs are going up because it’s just, it would almost cost you as much or more to switch companies to get their hardware in there and different things like that, but they’re all pretty well, at least the ones that we deal with, very, very close in price. But it’s just going up, just like your gasoline and your groceries and everything else, it’s just going up. All of it is. Not just those particular forms that we need, but everything just goes up.

President Abell: Susie, do you have any idea how many files you made up this last year, all your files, by chance?

Susan Kirk: How many cases we took in?

President Abell: Uh-huh.

Susan Kirk: Well, I think –

President Abell: Counting Misdemeanor and everything.

Susan Kirk: Its like 40-50,000. We are –

President Abell: So if you figured a dollar a file, you’d be well over 50,000 just to do files.

Susan Kirk: Just the shucks, just different things like that. I mean, we’re just increasing. I know that the storage cost is a big deal and I do have something that I want you to think about and I’m going to say this really fast because I know you’re busy for time. Imaging Office Systems, and this is coming whether we like it or not or whether the judges like it or not, but it’s something that I want you to think about. Everything would be scanned. Right now, we scan the order books and the rest of the files sit out at Kinder, which take up a huge amount of space. We would buy scanners and our girls would scan them in instead of file the paper. There would be no paper. Start-up costs would be approximately $180,000 the first year. After that, I know that sounds like a lot but now you’re talking about $100,000 storage.

President Abell: 115.

Susan Kirk: So, 50 to 60,000 each year after including going back and trying to start scanning the things that we have a Kinder to where one day, we would not have any more storage costs. It’s coming, I mean, it’s here. We can either begin something like this so that future Clerks and Councilmen aren’t going to have a storage bill that is totally astronomical. We are running, we average 350 cubic feet per month more every month. That’s how many more feet we take. And that will probably get us by the next three years. After that, you can probably increase that up to 400 cubic feet. So I’m going to talk to the judges and see if they, because I know some Judges like paper. They like all that paper. But we’re going to try and see, it’s approved by the state and I’ll bring you some, as many facts and figures as I can, but I think its something that we seriously need to consider. I, as the Clerk, hope I get elected next year, but I could just say, hey, I’m just going to go and forget this, let Kinder, we’ll just keep paying this and let somebody else deal with it. But I’m certainly willing to begin something that maybe six years down the road, you’re going to see we’re saving a lot of money, saving a lot of paper, the cost will go down. But it would take at least six to seven years for us to start seeing any kind of evening out period here.

President Abell: I have one question about that. Then are you saying that you can then destroy any paper that you scan in? I realize if someone, I think I’ve seen the system, someone brings in a case, they file it across the counter, you hand it right back to them. You scan it in and just hand it back to them.

Susan Kirk: That’s right, you file mark their copy and that’s it.

President Abell: Any other documents, interrogatories or anything that’s filed, can you destroy those on any case?

Susan Kirk: We scan everything that comes through except, you know, like a marriage license, things that you, oh, you know, the genealogists like to go back and see, those would be towards the end. It’s coming, I mean, the state just keeps –

President Abell: I mean, you’re not going to scan it in and then still have to store the paper, is what I’m getting at.

Susan Kirk: No, it isn’t a matter of like, you know, we have computers to get rid of the paper, but now we have computers and paper, and disk, and microfilm. This would be scanned in and that’s it. And it would be the file, not just order books, so there would be no paper.

President Abell: And no books to buy.

Susan Kirk: And no books to buy. And then that would eliminate our storage.

President Abell: Mr. Goebel, did you have a question?

Councilmember Goebel: Susan, does any other county have this system in place?

Susan Kirk: Yes, there are several. Marion County is the biggest one and that’s who we’re going to check with just to see, and they do it in other states, too, Ohio and well, our surrounding states. And so far, it’s, I guess it’s working well. Like I said, this is kind of in the baby stages now. All I could do was just kind of get you kind of a ball park, how much start-up costs, how much yearly costs would be. So it’s just something that if you guys and ladies are willing to consider, I will pursue this with the Judges. If it’s something that you say, no, forget it, then I can do that, too.

Councilmember Goebel: I would think you’d maybe ask the other counties that have it in place how its worked out for them and maybe give a report back to us on that.

Susan Kirk: Okay, I think it’s working out very well.

Councilmember Goebel: Thank you.

Susan Kirk: But I will get something in writing also on that.

President Abell: Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: You know, this isn’t the first time its been discussed and looking back, it was always my understanding that you could never do away with the hard copy.

Susan Kirk: The thing of it is, as I had said before, it’s become such a monster, the paperwork, --

Councilmember Raben: I understand, but I thought that the law required us to maintain a hard copy.

Susan Kirk: The law has changed. The state law has changed permitting us to scan these in. Now, and I wouldn’t want to just – I would like to begin doing something like that now and scan in what we have out there, which Marsha, you’re talking about that huge amount, but what’s also here is e-filing, too, which can help some. But still, you have to scan this stuff, you can’t just have it in one place. You know, you have to have it like three different places, so if you lose one copy of something, you go to the next building and pick up your other disk or your tape or your microfilm. So e-filing is coming, also. It’s here. There’s the federal, they do it. The federal courts, they do e-filing. But still, they’ve got to have it somewhere else. So they download from their computers on to disk and then from the disk, I think they microfilm or I’m not sure how all that works, but there is another option out there. But for now, being that we have such a huge amount at Kinder, we need to start addressing some of this like now. But I will, whatever the Council wishes, I will pursue it.

President Abell: I, for one, want to see you pursue it. I actually saw this system in operation in Louisville, Kentucky, and it worked fantastic over there. Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, I’m inclined to vote that same way. We switched to that four or five years ago at Atlas and everything is totally paperless today. The advantage of it is, I can sit at my desk and I can look up a shipment that’s in Seattle, Washington that happened four years ago. So the Judges, I think, would have a tremendous advantage of being able to get their fingers, not in an hour or two hours or a day or two, from retrieving it from Kinder or from your resources, but at their desks within a few minutes on any cases. So I think there’s a lot of advantages rather than just saving some storage. Obviously, that’s a good one, but the amount of time that they’ll save in having things at their fingertips, I think, would be a tremendous advantage to them. So, thank you.

President Abell: And anyone that wants paper, that’s fine. They can print it out, but then they can throw it away. You can’t, so if you scan it in, you can.

Susan Kirk: True, if a Judge or a Court Reporter, whoever needs that, they can print it out and I will have to say it was Z, was talking about using the company to collect money. Well, we did that last year with Capital Recovery and we did like over – I don’t know, 350,000 just on child support. I would love to be able to do that again and find something that if that company goes out and collects, we get it all. But as Marsha knows, when a case is filed, they’re divvied up. We just get little teeny tiny percentages of it. So we tried, we brought in a little over $300,000 last year that kind of helped the county, but I think we’re pretty well at the end unless you want to nickle and dime it to death.

President Abell: Does anyone else want to talk about the Clerk or then we can go to the IV-D?

Councilmember Sutton: I was just going to ask, as you’re going along, so that we don’t necessarily have to take any special time, if there’s some line items that you feel like, in what you know now and what we’re trying to get to, that we could possibly adjust, if you could just kind of share that with us, because you’ve got three different budgets here. So if you could share that with us.

Susan Kirk: Well, you can take out of line item 3700 probably $200. You can take it out of that and put it in Record Storage.

President Abell: Now we don’t want to move it somewhere else, we want to eliminate it.

Susan Kirk: Okay, well, you can have $200, because really, its only my Chief Deputy and I, we belong to the Clerks Association and I think that’s a hundred dollars apiece and then there’s the Voter Registration Association that deals with our state absentee and all that kind of stuff and I think that’s like $30 maybe. So really, we’re only, we could take $200 out of that. If you need that, that’s fine, because I don’t belong to anything else and I don’t like a bunch of magazines laying around. So there’s $200, Royce, right off the top you can have.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay, give me a few more zeroes in those numbers. Keep working at it here.

Councilmember Raben: That pretty much completes the budget hearings.

Susan Kirk: For any Councilman that’s been here since I’ve started, well, Sandie has, in Voter Registration, I am extremely conservative and I don’t come and ask for things unless we know that we need them and we will spend this money. So I’m just not that type of a person. I’m not stingy exactly but I’m pretty tight with a buck. So our budget is about as close as we can get it and may have to come back and ask for more on the storage. I just want to forewarn you on that.

President Abell: Okay, let’s go to – I’m sorry, go ahead.

CLERK IV-D

Councilmember Raben: Are we on IV-D, now?

President Abell: I was trying to get there, yes.

Councilmember Raben: On IV-D, Susie, what is your balance?

Susan Kirk: I don’t know, Jim, I didn’t look at the balance before I left.

Councilmember Raben: Okay.

President Abell: Maybe you can get that to us.

Susan Kirk: I can do that.

ELECTION OFFICE

President Abell: Let’s go to the Election Office, that’s page 71. That should be pretty easy because that’s all billed back to the City. Oh, this is 2008, sorry about that. This isn’t - no, this is our next county election.

Susan Kirk: I wasn’t going to say anything, I thought well hey, that’s good.

President Abell: Yeah, we’ll bill the city for the county election next year and see if they will pay it. Okay. Questions?

Councilmember Raben: Well, Royce’s question. Where would you cut from here?

Susan Kirk: Well, most of this stuff, 2280, that’s zeroed out, you noticed that. Of course, that went into the Inspector, Judge and Clerks. That’s the $10 for meals. I don’t know, 2008 is going to be a big election, primary and general. I don’t want to cut my Election Assistants because we’re going to try to have three early voting sites which the only cost to us is going to be workers, which is $8 an hour. I would have two people. You’re talking about six extra people, but I think that’s well worth $8 an hour to make it more convenient for the voters to vote. I’m just, I’m really leery to cut anything off it, being it’s going to be such a big election.

Councilmember Sutton: How about that Other Supplies line, 2700, and Contractual Service, 3530, if you could talk about that one, as well.

Susan Kirk: Well, Contractual Services, that’s where Kinder, well, we have to bid that out but, of course, I hope they get it every time. That’s the delivery and pickup of the iVotronics and we’re squeaking by with that one. That’s going to end up going up, too, before its over with. If there were some place I could cut, I would have cut it. I really would have. But, you know, there’s so many Inspectors, so many Judges, so many Clerks. Those are just set costs. And as far as, you know, Postage and Freight, that’s up a little bit because our contract with ES & S is – I’ve got them to change it around a little bit but we’ve paid double for things. We’ve got it in the contract that they do everything, but it’s also in the contract that we can do everything. So and we’ve got the equipment to do it, but yet, we’re not supposed to have the codes to get into Election Systems Software to be able to do it. Its really kind of – it’s kind of bad there, in a way. Now I’ve changed it around to where we did get some money back and Mr. Shetler is aware of that over the precinct supply kits, stuff like that, to where we’re getting other things, some supplies from ES & S, but–

President Abell: This is not something I think you can probably answer right now but we might look into finding out if we can’t deliver these, and I’m obviously very much aware of how big that equipment is, but maybe somebody from the County Garage, we might be able to find a way to cut that delivery cost. That is going to continue to just – I mean, there are some Inspectors that can come in trucks and take their own.

Susan Kirk: I wouldn’t even, this equipment is computerized. It can’t sit in somebody’s trunk or it’s, you know, it’s climate controlled. It just can’t be sitting somewhere hot, humid. I wouldn’t, I’d be –

President Abell: Well, the big unit isn’t computerized. The big unit is just the box it sits in. The computer is in that carry satchel they can take anyway.

Susan Kirk: If you’re taking one, unless you don’t want to use the big stands anymore, you’ve still got to get that junk out there.

President Abell: Well, that’s what I’m saying, if somebody could – well, we’ll talk about it. We might find another way to get those delivered. Any other questions?

Councilmember Raben: Janitorial?

Susan Kirk: Talk to the School Corporation.

President Abell: That’s cleanup after election day.

Susan Kirk: The School Corporation, normally janitorial fees are like $15. But except when we have polling places at the school, we have to pay those janitors what they actually make per hour, which is more than $15. So that’s why that’s the way that is. And that’s figured for how many schools that we currently have using as polling places. And, of course, obviously, in 2008, there’s going to be more schools because it’s county instead of city.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, but I guess looking back at 2006, we spent $2,050. Are we in more schools this – in 2008?

Susan Kirk: Well, you have to figure in their raises. The janitors get raises.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, but you’re more than doubling it.

Susan Kirk: Well, I went back and picked out the schools and took what we did before, so –

Councilmember Raben: 2006 was only half a budget, so that probably is correct.

President Abell: Any other questions? Thank you.

Susan Kirk: Thanks very much.

PROSECUTOR

President Abell: Prosecutor, page 40. We really don’t want to be arrested. One of you would be plenty, I’m sure.

Stan Levco: I brought reinforcements.

President Abell: So did we.

Stan Levco: I’m Stan Levco, Prosecutor, would you like me to make a brief statement?

President Abell: Certainly, if you’d like.

Stan Levco: Yeah, I think there’s just a few things that are going to be something for you to consider, what I think will be worthy of consideration. I’ll start-off with IV-D, I’ve asked for two more IV-D employees, I have Doug Brown and Malcolm Gwinn to talk about in more detail if you want. But essentially it’s this, it really doesn’t cost the county maybe hardly anything if you do this. You get a 67% reimbursement from the state off the top, but IV-D takes in money and you get incentive from that, so the overall expenditure from the county in the long run is almost zero. And I think it will be more effective for us to have more employees. We could, when we’re ranked in the state, its not very high and I think the major reason is we have the low staff. I’ve handed out a handout here that shows how we compare with the four or five largest counties and we have our staff is one of the smallest and our employees collect as much, if not more, than most of the other counties. So that, I think, is a major thing for you to consider. The other two that I’ve asked for more money on would be the Drug Law Enforcement. The matching grant was cut last year by 15%, and a result of that, we’re asking for an additional $6,000. The other thing I want to talk about is on Domestic Violence, which I think on the surface looks like we’re asking for more than we’re actually asking for. We’re asking for a $33,000 increase, but the reason that increase is so much is I’ve got a new domestic violence prosecutor who has been with the county for over twenty years and as a result of that, his salary is $79,000, and that’s a whole lot more than the previous person who was in there. If I were to not put him into Domestic Violence and just have him as a regular deputy and put in a Deputy with no experience, that would save $27,000 in that category, but it truly wouldn’t save $27,000 because then he’d be paid $27,000 more in the category where the first year person is. Are you following this?

President Abell: Uh-huh.

Stan Levco: So that even though it looks like that’s $20,000 more, it really isn’t. However, there is $5,000 more. I’m asking for $33,000 more, really only 5,000 of it is extra.

President Abell: What line item is that?

Stan Levco: Oh gosh. Its Domestic Violence. Do you know? Well, let me see, I ought to be able to figure it out by the salary. Do you see –

President Abell: Well, I’m looking. Does anybody else know?

Councilmember Sutton: Page 50?

Stan Levco: I was on page 43 to start off.

President Abell: Did anybody find it?

Stan Levco: 108? They’re telling me its 108. On page 50.

President Abell: Page 50. No wonder.

Stan Levco: Is that where it’s 79,329? Yeah, okay. 3994. 1085.

Regene Newman: Yes.

Councilmember Winnecke: (Inaudible – microphone not turned on)

Stan Levco: Okay, I’ll say it again. We’re requesting 79,000 for the salary. That is roughly 25 or 30,000 more than we requested last year. If you said no, I’m not going to do that, I don’t know that you can, but if you did, then I would arguably put somebody else in there with a salary that would be 25,000 less, which I could do, but then I would take, he’s got a name, Neil Thomas, I’d put him in that other person’s position and you’d have to pay an extra 25,000 in that other person’s position, and you’d have to pay that unless you eliminated the job. So the extra that I’m asking for is almost entirely a result of the fact that he has that much longevity as opposed to the person who was in there last year. He’s going to have to be paid that salary somewhere. So really, I’m only asking for about an additional $5,000 in that category even though it looks like I’m asking for 33. It is costing the county $5,000 more overall, not 33,000.

President Abell: Okay, now that I know where that is, what’s the line item that you put somebody else in where he was before?

Stan Levco: Well, he is now in a different, he would be in the Filing Deputy and there would be a number of switches. The Filing Deputy, last year, made more than the Filing Deputy this year because he had more longevity than the present Filing Deputy. So that money I’m asking for is less this year than I got last year for that position. Let’s see if I can figure out that...

President Abell: This is kind of strange.

Stan Levco: Do you know where Gary...

President Abell: This is hard to figure out. Because I didn’t see any that went down, that’s my problem. I don’t see any that went down. Everything I see is going up.

Regene Newman: I’ll get those numbers to you.

Stan Levco: Well, I know Jonathon Parkhurst was here last year, not here now, and made more than his successor is making.

President Abell: Well, that might be the Deputy under line item 1190-1080. It went from 59 to 51,600 next year. If you’d just get us an explanation, we’re not going to sit here and hash it out this minute, but just let us know.

Stan Levco: Okay. I’m sure that one did – at least that one did go down. And the other thing, we asked for 2,000 more in Postage for IV-D, that’s just generally a function of we’re trying to collect more and we use what we need to use. But we’ve asked for 2,000 more there and Royce isn’t here, but to answer his question, I think I want to invoke the smidgen defense also.

President Abell: Now IV-D is on page 44. You’re jumping around and we keep can’t keep up with you. That’s the problem, IV-D is on page 44. And you say you increased what by 2,000?

Stan Levco: Postage.

President Abell: Page 45.

Stan Levco: Other than that, I think we’ve asked for essentially the same thing everywhere.

President Abell: Does anyone have any questions?

Councilmember Leader: I have one. Mr. Levco, why did your Telephone go down? Do you have any idea about that? Significantly.

President Abell: Would you come to the microphone please so we can get this on the record?

Regene Newman: Hi, Regene Newman. Just the cost per month has stayed the same and the amount that was budgeted in there previously, we no longer need that amount. So we cut it down.

Councilmember Leader: Thank you.

President Abell: Any other questions? Mr. Winnecke?

Councilmember Winnecke: Stan, just kind of perusing the handout real quickly, it says you’re asking for two additional administrative employees, but in the budget it says Enforcement Officers. Is that just a semantic difference?

Stan Levco: I think so, yeah. They would be just to help us collect child support.

Councilmember Winnecke: Okay, thanks.

President Abell: Any other questions? I have one question, I think I can probably answer it myself. But how many part-time attorneys do you have? Two, three, four?

Stan Levco: You mean Part-time Deputy Prosecutors?

President Abell: Yes, that’s what I meant.

Stan Levco: I think that’d be about four (inaudible), Carithers, Zoss, Berger...five.

President Abell: Five? Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you, Mr. Levco.

Stan Levco: Thank you.

PUBLIC DEFENDER

President Abell: Public Defender. Public Defender is on page 91. Good morning, Mr. Owens.

Steve Owens: Good morning. How are you this morning?

President Abell: Do you have something you want to tell us before we start asking you questions?

Steve Owens: I think probably the only thing that I would point out is that – it’s on page 93 -- you’re going to see two additional full-time employees that we’ve asked that you budget for. One attorney and one secretary. That is the second phase of the juvenile compliance program that we’ve been before the Council on earlier this year. We implemented phase one the latter part of May of 2007. This is the second phase and hopefully the third phase we can kick in, in 2009. So even though we are adding people, it’s to bring the juvenile court into compliance.

Councilmember Winnecke: Steve, which lines are those? I’m sorry.

Steve Owens: Lloyd, those would be 1880, Full-time Deputy Public Defender. It’s the third entry down on page 93. And then 1890 Secretary.

Councilmember Winnecke: Okay, thank you.

President Abell: Any questions? Ms. Leader?

Councilmember Leader: Good morning. I wonder if you could explain the increase in the Pauper Expense for me, please?

Steve Owens: I’ll try to simplify it as much as I can. When we started out, we had a 50 or $60,000 line item Pauper Expense. That pays for supplemental public defenders because we’re pretty well mandated in terms of the case loads, we have to go outside the office. That was zeroed, I believe, in 2006. So we are asking for it to be put back to the level that it previously existed. And in answer to Royce’s question, I suppose if I had to pick an item where I’d say let’s make a cut, I’d probably suggest cutting that somewhat. We are trying to make up the difference through the bond forfeiture account. We’ve been pretty aggressive with that, have been fairly successful. But frankly, given the funding that we did for Death Penalty, we’ve managed to get some money back into that account, but we’re just kind of at a break-even spot right now. So I would guess that if we cut that line item, we could stand some cut, but we’d need more than $10,000.

President Abell: Anyone else? Mr. Goebel?

Councilmember Goebel: Steve, I know the answer to this already, but with a Full-time Public Defender, Juvenile, will that lower the number of part-time employees?

Steve Owens: No.

Councilmember Goebel: Thank you.

President Abell: How many part-time deputies do you have?

Steve Owens: 23 part-time deputies covering the felony, misdemeanor and juvenile courts.

President Abell: 23?

Steve Owens: 23.

President Abell: Any other questions?

Councilmember Winnecke: Real quickly, and back to the two juvenile that I referenced earlier, those will bring us, that’s the next step in the compliance issue with the state, right?

Steve Owens: That’s the next step to bring them in. Right now, we have a full-time juvenile delinquency public defender, that was phase one, this would be starting the phase two.

Councilmember Winnecke: Okay. Thanks.

President Abell: Other questions? Thank you, Mr. Owen. Sheriff, page 14. We’re going to change tapes before you get started, Eric.

TAPE CHANGED

SHERIFF

President Abell: Good morning.

Eric Williams: Good morning.

President Abell: Would you like to start or do you want us to start?

Eric Williams: Wow, I don’t know, that’s a tough question. But with Royce absent, he didn’t specify whose budget I could ask you to take it out of so maybe we could start with the Public Defender’s budget or somebody’s. Couple of quick things. I think we submitted a fairly realistic budget for 2008 fiscal year. I know that some of these items are ones we commonly cut and go back and re-visit it. I understand that, you know, inmate food, medical. But what I’ve tried to prepare is a budget that is reflective of what the needs we perceive for the Sheriff’s office for the year 2008. With that, I really don’t have any opening statements or comments. It’s indicative, I should have brought a whole bunch of people if you’re going to get off this easy if you have a whole bunch of people. I’d probably say the area you’re going to be concerned most with is the new employees that are in with the Jail’s budget.

President Abell: Yes.

Eric Williams: Yeah, I am a mind reader so. There are nine new positions I have requested and they are in the position of Confinement Officer for the new confinement center. Nine positions...

President Abell: May I stop you one minute and tell the councilmen, Jail is on page 27.

Eric Williams: I’m sorry. Confinement Officers are basically the guards that work in the confinement center. Nine positions basically allows us to have two additional people 24-7, around the clock in that facility. That was the number one, I surveyed my staff, that we felt would be a good place to start with increasing our staff, our security level, our ability to train, our ability to manage and monitor the facility. Those are important people, they do an important job and we’re still dealing with the facility we are learning in. It is growing and changing. It’s a number I’m comfortable requesting, but it’s also a number that I know is going to be very difficult for the Council to swallow, so I felt it’s important to put it on the table so you are aware of my needs, but that’s one of those areas that I know we’re gonna, we’ll have to work through. And other than that, I’m happy to answer any questions about my budget request.

President Abell: Any questions? Ms. Leader?

Councilmember Leader: Good morning.

Eric Williams: Good morning.

Councilmember Leader: Explain to me what the, you have quite a number of Confinement Officers now. How many do you have now and how would the new ones go into that mix?

Eric Williams: Basically the new ones, we have roughly 97-98 Confinement Officers working. Those are divided up amongst three basic crews because we operate 24-7, 365. The highest staff crew is the day shift crew and that’s basically because it’s a much more active crew with the preparation for courts and all the activities that occur during the day. We arrived at the number of nine with our agreements and our contracts, there’s a lot of time off, sick time, comp time, because we don’t pay overtime for everybody as we go, they have the option. So comp time continues to create situations for when the people can take comp time and those are days off that I’ve got to cover with somebody else. So our hope was that we would be able to add two people to every crew and to do that we would need nine. Each shift is broken into three crews so, three crews times three is nine, so that’ll only put one on each one. They all work a four and two schedule, so that means two crews are working at any given time which allows me to have two more people on the floor at any given time. That’s a real Cliff’s Notes version on how we got to that number and what it would accomplish, but that would put two more people 24-7 in that facility.

President Abell: Mr. Goebel?

Councilmember Goebel: Sheriff, do you foresee that cutting down the costs of comp time and overtime if you have more manpower?

Eric Williams: It’s very difficult to project that. There are a lot of formulas out there that we’ve looked at as far as cost-benefit ratios and values of using overtime as opposed to new employees, because obviously with those new employees comes benefits and all the other things that are the unforeseen costs hidden behind there. And there are points in time when it’s a smarter business decision just to pay overtime to cover your shortages and we’re not opposed to that. But we’re at a point where we’re spending a lot in overtime and we’re getting a lot of comp time. Now as a manager, I don’t think my employees would like to hear this, but as a manager of that operation I would much rather have no comp time and completely funded overtime and a pay-as-you-go kind of mentality so I don’t accrue the comp time. And if we can ever get to a situation like that, that would make it a much easier facility to manage. I think it would make a slight difference. Would it be a balance? No. But it would increase our ability to gets things done more efficiently in the facility.

Councilmember Goebel: If you would add these officers and you have, let’s say, someone who’s sick or is going to take comp time, you would not then call in someone else to replace that person, correct?

Eric Williams: In theory, you know the part of that comes with our contractual negotiations and we would work with the union to make sure that our current minimum standards stayed the same so that that’s our minimum level of staffing in the facility which we think is a good facility. So, yes, in theory, by adding those two people would give us two more to start with before we’d reach that minimum and have to start calling people in. So, mathematically yes. It would work that way. Realistically, in the real world, sometimes it doesn’t quite work that way.

President Abell: Other questions? Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: Yeah. Sheriff if you would, explain to the Council kind of what’s going on with regards to Commissary and how the funds accumulated and how much more revenues we had a few years ago based on today’s.

Eric Williams: You know, under Sheriff Ellsworth’s administration and so far into my administration I’m extremely proud of the way we’ve been able to manage our commissary account and put it towards good uses within the county especially managing the jail and the sheriff’s office. But there have been some changes in the statutes and the way the Commissary is funded. The primary source of revenue in Commissary has traditionally been the phone service. The inmate collect calls. We’ve always, we’ve gotten a percentage of that. Well, the DOC and the legislature a few years back changed the ways that can be structured and as those agreements are expiring and renegotiated as the DOC changes, they’re forcing those to change, which is driving the money that the Sheriff and Commissary gets down. So while we’re now housing roughly two times as many people as we used to, our Commissary income has gone down by almost 50%. That, coupled with the increased costs and some other things we’re doing, is making Commissary stretch fairly thin, not like we, you know, I’m proud to say that in the previous administration we were able to accrue up to a half million dollars in that account to put towards the construction of this facility. You know, I think I’ve been and I think Sheriff Ellsworth, we’re both very, very cooperative and understanding and tried to used that money to alleviate the need to ask you all for things like prisoner transport vehicles periodically, and shoes and bedding and soap and all the things that it takes to run that jail. And we’re able to take that out of Commissary. That’s not going to be the case much longer. At least not to the level we’ve been able to do it. We’re going to continue to struggle to make it work, but right now I’m carrying about a $19,000 balance in Commissary which is not anywhere close to what it historically had been. I gave you all a copy of my Commissary for six months report at your last regular meeting and I hope you had a chance to look through that, because I think it indicates that money’s been used very wisely and used towards the operation of the facility. And we’ll continue to do that. I pledge to you that I know that money is supposed to go to make the sheriff’s office run and do those things, but the funds are just not going to be the way they used to be.

President Abell: Other questions? Well, I have one. On Page 25, line item 3530 Contractual Services, I do think I know what this is for, the $123,600?

Eric Williams: Correct. That is for our IT Services, similar to the services that MRC provides to the rest of the county. That is for the contract that was signed by the commissioners.

President Abell: Pending funding.

Eric Williams: Pending funding. Yes, I’m very well aware that. And I realize that is an increase but I think that is probably where the market is. It is not an unreasonable number for the amount of services that’s being provided and the level of service we’re getting. Now, I think that’s an area that I’m still going to be able to help with from Commissary and from user fees and some areas, but I am going to need some assistance to pay that contract. But again, as I stated very early on, I wanted to post a realistic budget and what the actual dollars were there so you had a good feel of what it was taking to run the office. With that contract, we were working very closely with Matt. We’ve got some meetings scheduled to make sure things enterprise-wide and working in tandem with him. But I also believe that it’s a good avenue and I think we’ve discussed that at length with various people, to not have the county entirely dependent on one vendor. You know, I’m very comfortable with the vendor we have. He’s been a great vendor for us and he knows our system very, very well. He not only manages my IT, but he also manages our 800 megahertz system. He serves as the back-up to the CAD for Central Dispatch, and he’s also doing the maintenance work on the security electronics for the jail. I do know the Building Authority is going, I’m going to be able to invoice them back for a small part of that which will make that number come down. But that is the actual value of that contract. I don’t know if that answered your question in any way, shape or form.

President Abell: Well, I’m just going to be real up-front with you, I think that’s a ridiculous figure.

Eric Williams: Okay.

President Abell: That’s way too much money. That’s more than we pay anybody in IT in this building.

Eric Williams: As an employee, but I think it’s very comparable if not less that what we’re paying our other consultant in this building.

President Abell: You’re talking about Mark Rolley?

Eric Williams: Yes.

President Abell: Well, but Mr. Rolley has levels of service that he has to meet and your’s doesn’t have that, and that’s a big factor. That’s a huge difference.

Eric Williams: And our vendor was very willing to discuss SLA’s, but that would have driven the cost up much similar to where Mark’s MRC Consulting is, and right now we are meeting service levels above my expectations and getting things done. Now, he was very happy to do that, and as am I. But with those service levels there’s also price and dollars affixed to that, too, so. Again, I’m very comfortable with that number and I think is within what the market will bear for what we’re asking out of that contract.

President Abell: I disagree, but that’s beside the point.

Eric Williams: I think as long as everybody agrees professionally then we can agree to disagree and we’ll work through it.

President Abell: Yeah, I do totally disagree with paying anyone $123,600. But I wasn’t in favor of paying the fee we paid Mark Rolley, so that doesn’t make that any different.

Eric Williams: Consistency is a great thing. I don’t disagree with you.

President Abell: Well, the problem is consistency is going to take this budget out of the taxpayer’s realm. That’s a problem. Next thing we’ll see is Rolley will want an increase, Arvay will want an increase, Tim VanCleave will want an increase, and there becomes a point when we can’t afford any more. And you know, if you think $123,600 is responsible, and you know what, what would we be to argue if you thought $300,00 was, maybe a half a million, maybe $750,000. Where do we stop this slide? And we’ve got to stop this slide, because we can’t afford it.

Eric Williams: And you and I have discussed that several times through the ITAC and different, because I think we generally are on the same page and that, and I think that the answer is somewhere consistently across the board for the entire county. I’m not in disagreement with your statement at all.

President Abell: It’s a problem. But I would hope that if who, whatever that salary works out to be or the contract finally comes in at, if he’s doing something for Central Dispatch, he’d bill some of that back to the city.

Eric Williams: I’d like to be able to try and do that, too.

President Abell: I would think that that would be in order. Any other questions? Mr. Goebel?

Councilmember Goebel: On 4230, what is your hope for motor vehicles?

Eric Williams: Well, we’d like to replace as much of our fleet as possible. Traditionally, we had gotten into the habit of replacing ten vehicles a year and that was around the $250,000 to $260,000 range. A year ago, two years ago, we didn’t get any vehicles so that’s placed us in a little bit of a bind and then there was another year where the money got put off by a while which created a situation, but we’ve overcome that. The other thing that is coming out of that line item is our prisoner transport vehicles, the maintenance, purchasing new vehicles to move back and forth to courts and those kinds of things. That’s an area where I think that that’s a realistic request for an agency of our size, but I also think that’s an area that’s got a lot of wiggle room in it.

President Abell: Any other questions? Ms Leader?

Councilmember Leader: I have two. Page 33, you have a $100,000 increase in food expense, plus a new item, $50,000 for Office Supplies under 2600. Can you just give me an explanation with those two, please.

Eric Williams: The food items is basically on the current contractual rate for feeding inmates. It is just a projected number based on our average daily population and where we perceive it going throughout the year. I have notified Aramark that their contract has officially expired or will shortly and that we want to renegotiate that, and we’ll be working with the county attorney to accomplish that so, I don’t know if there’s anything on the horizon as far as a better rate, it may not be as good. I don’t know where that’s going to go. The Office Supplies is very much like everybody else. When we took over the entire booking process for the county and the new jail a lot of the office supplies had traditionally come out of Commissary and other places, but just as the clerk had mentioned, you know, the preparation of shucks and those kinds of things. If you look at every new inmate that comes into the facility there’s about $4.00 of paper work per inmate. When you look at a medical shuck, a booking shuck and all the paperwork that goes to the Prosecutor’s office and the copies that get made. So, you take that times the 12,000 people that come through the facility, just right off the bat that’s roughly $48,000, somewhere in that range. And I still think the Commissary and user fees can accomplish some of that, but that’s for office supplies for the entire office.

Councilmember Leader: So that $50,000 was not shown in previous years; it was shown somewhere else?

Eric Williams: Well, a lot of it’s what we inherit and a lot comes from cuts several years ago and we’ve been able to manage that with Commissary. Again, I’ve tried to submit a very realistic budget of what it’s costing to run that office. I think there are areas that we’re going to be able to wiggle this around and make some differences. But I felt it was important and as I’ve talked to various ones, my liaison, that we would submit a realistic budget of what the dollars cost to run the office.

Councilmember Leader: Guess this same is true then for the increase from $300,000 to $750,000 for medical?

Eric Williams: The medical expenses, that’s pretty close to where we’ve spent this year with all the extra appropriations. You know, medical expenses is one of those that we’ve recently signed an agreement with CRS through the county that is allowing us to monitor and trying to drive those prices down. We’re looking for every avenue we possibly can, but yet it’s very clear that we are required to provide medical care and health care to the inmates while they are in our custody, and that’s one I would love to see us be able to make go away if there was a way to do it, because I think it’s distasteful to a lot of people but it is a requirement and I am forced to see to it that it gets done.

Councilmember Leader: And then what is in the 200,000 Jail Expense under personal services, 2200 account?

Eric Williams: Which one is that?

Councilmember Leader: Page 33, it’s account 2200. There was no expense there last year; it’s $200,000 this year.

Eric Williams: Which page is it...20?

Councilmember Leader: It’s on Page 33. It’s account 2200. In 2005, it was $11,049.

Eric Williams: Oh, again, that’s about where we are spending out of the Commissary on the jail expenses for things like toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, bedding, clothing, shoes, soaps, laundry detergent, and all of the things that it takes to run the jail that traditionally would have come out of Commissary for the last few years. That number used to be funded much, much higher several years ago and through time Council’s gradually whittled that down to where the last few years we were able to make it without any assistance from Council and that’s a number that that’s about where we were at with what Commissary was doing for it. I would like to note that there is no changes in the Community Corrections budget. We are continuing to be able to operate that almost entirely out of user fees, you know other than the personnel that are in the 136 account. We’ve asked for no increases for anything in there. In fact, they’re all zeroed out by our own accord because we’re able to manage that out of user fees as we said we would do in times past. We’re trying to do what we can do with the money that we have coming in.

President Abell: Could I go back to something Ms. Leader was, when we had the jail here, and the booking occurred, EPD did the booking.

Eric Williams: Correct.

President Abell: And now you do it?

Eric Williams: Right.

President Abell: So, do we get any financial compensation from EPD to taking on their work?

Eric Williams: No.

President Abell: Well, maybe we ought to be talking about that then. Ok.

Eric Williams: And I think that’s a very fair assessment, and I’m happy to partake in those conversations with you.

President Abell: Ok. Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, one last explanation. Would you explain to the Council the Extra Help. The $100,000 for the Process Servers.

Eric Williams: The Extra Help line item that, that do you still see that I have the Process Servers, there’s ten line items in there that are shown, and then we’ve also taken those dollars and moved them over to Extra Help. If the Extra Help is granted like that, then we’ll get rid of the ten process server line items. Basically, instead of having the ten designated line items, we’d much rather work the Process Servers as Extra Help that way when paper service is picking up and we have more, I could put a couple part-timers in that line item, and use them as they see fit. I can handle vacations much more flexibly like that. All the other part-timers that we have work out of that line item. Process Servers, for some reason at some point in time, got put in specific line items for them which make it very difficult to manage extra needs and process services is one of those that kind of fluctuates. We may have a period of time where we can bring on an eleventh or twelfth for a very short period of time, and at other times, not have as many working. It’s very difficult to do with the current set up. And this would be basically the same dollar amount and same rate but just in a more flexible account. Because those are all non-benefitted employees; they work part-time. Did that make sense?

President Abell: Other questions? Okay. Thank you.

Eric Williams: Thank you. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to drop me an e-mail or whatever and I can try to get you an answer.

TAPE CHANGED

DRUG AND ALCOHOL DEFERRAL SERVICE

President Abell: We are back on the record. I’m totally lost here, Drug & Alcohol on page 113.

Deloris Koch: I’m Deloris Koch, Director. We didn’t ask for any increases in any line items except adding a line item for computers. We have an old computer that was scrapped recently that has not been used for quite some time because its an inoperable, it was never networked with our other computers. What we’re asking for is a new computer monitor and printer. We put 2,000, we’re considering with the hookup for networking. We’re thinking it would be very close to the $1,500 mark, so we cushioned that a bit. Its going to cost, my understanding from Computer Services, it would be at least 2 to $300 to network that computer with our other computers in the office. I don’t know what other questions you might have.

President Abell: Does anyone have any questions? We will probably move that to another area, but – we’re going to put all of the computers in one line item and do a bulk purchase with Mr. Arvay’s company. But if you see it removed, don’t get too alarmed.

Deloris Koch: Okay.

President Abell: It will just be moved over somewhere else.

Deloris Koch: Any other questions?

President Abell: Okay, thank you.

Deloris Koch: Thank you.

President Abell: Superior Court, page 105.

SUPERIOR COURT

President Abell: Good morning, Judge.

Terry Dietsch: Good morning. I am sorry Mr. Sutton isn’t here because right off the bat I would like to tell you that I would like to give back $8,000.

President Abell: We like that. What line item is that coming from?

Terry Dietsch: That’s line item 1370-3941 on page 111, Guardian Ad-Litem. And since we met with you, Ms. Abell, as our liaison, I met with Judge Niemeier and decided that we could decrease that particular line item by that amount.

President Abell: You’ve got it at 20,000, so you’re going to take it down to 14?

Councilmember Winnecke: 12.

President Abell: Down to 12? I’m looking at the wrong line item, then.

Terry Dietsch: 1370-3941.

Councilmember Leader: You’re going to take it to 12?

Terry Dietsch: Yes, ma’am.

President Abell: Okay. So is that your way of giving us that at the first so that we won’t knock anything else off?

Terry Dietsch: That’s the (inaudible). All of the salary accounts reflect a three percent increase. Those that do not are step raises and I think there are either ten or eleven of those. I would like to call your attention to page 111, 1370-3932 CASA. That is a substantial increase over last year. That merits an explanation and I think one was provided to you, Ms. Abell, correct?

President Abell: Yes.

Terry Dietsch: Legislation was passed requiring, in essence, that each child abused or neglected have an advocate. The state gives a grant to the counties. That grant as estimated by the state will be $96,194. In order to get that, we have to match that amount. And that has always been the case, it’s just that it went up due to the legislation. I checked with Judge Niemeier since this may not be a hard and fast amount to make sure that if the state comes up with less than that we don’t pay CASA any more than the state comes up with. You follow me?

President Abell: Uh-huh.

Terry Dietsch: Also on page 111, --

President Abell: Let me, can we stop there for just a minute? Go ahead, Mr. Raben.

Councilmember Raben: If we don’t, I mean, we could stay at our today’s level and still get reimbursed an equal amount, right?

Terry Dietsch: Yeah, I suppose, technically, we would be in violation of that statute.

Councilmember Winnecke: What he’s saying is, the statute changed where they have to provide more advocates for the children, so to receive the state match, we have to match it. But the law, the statute change is based on the number of advocates you have to have.

Terry Dietsch: Yeah, it increases considerably. As a matter of fact, I think its going to be very difficult to get that many advocates, what we need. But none the less, that’s the statute.

President Abell: Do you have an estimate of how many advocates we’re going to need? Have you thought of –

Terry Dietsch: I talked to Judge Niemeier, and he tells me at the present time, that we have approximately 300 children in need of services. And at the present time, we don’t have anywhere near that number of volunteers.

President Abell: That’s ridiculous. Did you want to ask another question, Mr. Raben? Well, and if this figure fell somewhere in between, it would still – let’s say instead of $96,164, it was $89,000, it would still be a matching grant?

Terry Dietsch: Right. And the portion that we give to CASA, would be reduced by that much. If it turns out the 96 is not the firm figure, its something less, then our part is going to be less. We’re simply going to match whatever it is.

President Abell: Okay.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, can we –

Councilmember Winnecke: But the figure is really driven by the number of advocates that we need, right?

Terry Dietsch: Its driven by the figure the state has indicated its going to give here in Vanderburgh County.

Councilmember Winnecke: So they are basing that on previous case histories?

Terry Dietsch: Yeah, I suppose so. I’m not really clear on it.

President Abell: Did you have something, Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: I was going to move back to page 110. Patient/Inmate, I’m somewhat shocked by that one.

Terry Dietsch: Yeah. I checked again and as of June 30th, we have expended $946,000.

Councilmember Raben: Okay.

Terry Dietsch: And that’s Patient/Inmate Care.

Councilmember Raben: Right. YCC Operation, it doesn’t appear as if its alleviated that line item whatsoever.

Terry Dietsch: Well, if you’ll recall, the last time I appeared, I said that its going to be a while before we can determine to what extent that’s going to be reduced. And there are a couple of reasons for that. If you’ll recall, the local detention center got in operation very late. Then, I think it was placed on probation what, for two months. I’m not even certain at this point whether that portion of the detention center here for girls is up and running. I meant to check that, but I didn’t. So its going to take a while before we determine if there is going to be a substantial savings. And as you know, the YCC contract goes up each year. I was going to point that out. It goes from 1,493,500 to 1,538,000 for 2008.

President Abell: That’s contractual, isn’t it?

Terry Dietsch: That’s contractual, yes. And I’m hoping we won’t expend that much money.

Councilmember Raben: I would think that because we are kind of late, that they would push that contract back. That, you know, --

President Abell: They did.

Terry Dietsch: I think steps have been taken to get a rebate on that.

Councilmember Raben: They still take the increase, that after the first year, we’re still going to take that increase in ‘08?

President Abell: Oh, you mean that the percentage increase they get every year should not go into effect as of January 1.

Councilmember Winnecke: The Commissioners would know better, but I believe that the increase would take effect of the effective date of the opening, which was like March, more or less, I think.

President Abell: Do you know, Mr. Fluty?

Bill Fluty: (Inaudible)

President Abell: Okay.

Councilmember Winnecke: But the pro rata issue is spelled out in the contract with the county. We can find that.

Terry Dietsch: And plus, we did not pay them until they were up and operating. Mr. Raben, I think I know what you’re saying. This could be cut back. That figure could be cut back and we would hope that we are going to expend less than that amount. But you understand that if that is not the case, then we would have to come back in 2008 and get an appropriation.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, I’m just shocked. And again, maybe some of us can take an opportunity to sit down with Judge Niemeier, but you know, that’s even after the YCC, its still a 50 percent increase. I wasn’t really ever expecting that, or any increase at all.

Terry Dietsch: Well, I don’t know if that’s actually going to reflect a 50% increase, Jim.

Councilmember Raben: 2.9 versus last year we spent 2,082,000, and this request, if you combine the two, its 2,938,000. So that’s 900 and some odd thousand dollar increase.

President Abell: Its about a third.

Terry Dietsch: Well, like I said, if you want to cut that, that’s fine. But whatever the bottom figure happens to be, that’s what we’re going to have to pay because if you’ll recall, we had to come back this year for an additional 500,000. But you know, I’m certainly willing to work with you on that.

President Abell: Mr. Winnecke?

Councilmember Winnecke: I had a question about a figure that’s a lot less than that. On the Copy Machine Lease, why is that up so much?

Terry Dietsch: I’m sorry?

Councilmember Winnecke: Copy Machine Lease on 3620, at the bottom of 110.

Terry Dietsch: When we met with our liaison, Ms. Abell, I told her that our copy machine is going kerplunk. Last week, we had a repair man in every day. We decided that perhaps it would be advisable and we are looking into, either getting a new machine on a lease with an option to purchase, or maybe even purchase, depending upon the cost involved. And so what we did, we added another $6,000 to that for 2008 hoping we could get by until then. I don’t think we’re going to be able to. So we may have to get a copy machine this year and if we do, then that additional $6,000, we’d be happy to repeal.

President Abell: Other questions? Thank you, Judge.

SUPERIOR COURT DRUG COURT

President Abell: Superior Court Drug Court, Judge Trockman, page 115.

Wayne Trockman: Good morning.

President Abell: Good morning.

Wayne Trockman: I can answer any questions that you have. I can just give a one minute overview of where we are with regard to our funding. We have been turned up on our head just a little bit. The money that, about a third of our budget has always come from a federal source, Byrne. That’s been cut back, it was cut back substantially in ‘07 and its being cut back even more so in ‘08. And not only is the amount that we’re receiving being reduced, but the match is going up. And so when that was announced in ‘06, and the bigger picture is, about a third of our funding comes from this source, about a half of our funding comes – about a third comes from Byrne, which is federal, about a half comes from the Department of Corrections, and then you fund one position for us, one employee. And so when we realized that we were going to be cut back in ‘07, in ‘06, I requested a meeting with the Department of Corrections. We were going to lose about $90,000, and we did lose $90,000 from this federal source. The Department of Corrections was very sympathetic and, in fact, agreed to pick up the difference to keep us operating at the same level that we’ve been operating at. And that’s going to be helpful for the county also, now that they’ve agreed to do that in that they do not have a match. Their money to us is direct, as I understand it. I think that’s the case, Bill. However, the money that we receive from Byrne in ‘07, we were not told this, but the match went from 25% to 40%. That was announced very late in the game. We knew approximately how much we were going to be cut back in terms of total dollars, but they didn’t tell us that they were going to raise the match. And so, I think that we have pending before you a request for ‘08, for an additional $10,921 to make up that difference in the match. And then they’ve now told us that the match is 50% for ‘08 and we presented a budget to you for the Byrne match in ‘08, along with the position that you fund and the other minor assistance that you provide to us. And so our total request, if I have it here, for ‘08 is 52,746. And then, as I said, I think that the total amount of county, I haven’t done the math, but I think that the total amount of county funding for this program is decreasing because this $90,000 the DOC is picking up now requires no match, not 40% or 50%, and so I think that the total ought to be coming down. I haven’t done that math. Our budget hasn’t changed. The only increases in our budget have been for salaries. We haven’t added any staff or other expenses. So I can answer any questions that you have specifically. I’ve been very encouraged by the Department of Corrections. I think that most of you have seen, our court participated in a state-wide evaluation by a national firm of five drug courts in Indiana and I didn’t bring those exact results with me, but it shows that our court, along with four of the five courts that were studied, showing significant savings, significant cost benefit savings as related to the control group that they used. It showed also as importantly, a significant reduction in recidivism. And we have individuals who we’re bringing back from the Department of Corrections who would otherwise soon be released into our community who were much more likely to re-offend if not for the fact that they were going through this intensive program. And there are also people that we just simply take directly into the program that don’t pass through the Department of Corrections first. But I’d be happy to email to anyone a summary of that report. The report is about 95 pages, but there is a two-page summary of our court and five other adult courts if anyone is interested. But it showed that what we’re doing is successful and it’s money well spent.

President Abell: Mr. Goebel?

Councilmember Goebel: Real quickly, this is off the budget topic, but I’ve seen your graduation before and how much contact do you have with graduates after you –

Wayne Trockman: We track them as long as we can. We try to track them for three years. There have been those who have gone off the radar and we’ve been unable to keep up with, but that’s one of the reasons why this national fund was able to make an accurate report on recidivism rates because the management information system that we use is designed not only to have information about offenders before they enter, all the information that we gather on them while they’re in the court and then we track them for three years afterwards. Now some of them do fall off the radar, but we did provide all of that information which was used to come up. The decrease in recidivism was about 38%, as I recall, in our quote as opposed to the control group. But again, I’d be happy to provide that summary or the full report to anyone who is interested. It was just completed maybe six or eight weeks, maybe six or so weeks ago.

President Abell: I’d like to see the summary.

Wayne Trockman: I’ll ask, Sandie, I’ll work with you on getting everyone’s email address and I’ll email the summary. And if anyone wants to see the full report, then I’ll deliver. And why don’t I also just deliver a copy of the full report, Sandie, to your office, so its available.

President Abell: Thank you.

Wayne Trockman: Now I don’t have the full report on the other courts but I could get those if there is interest.

President Abell: Your drug court has been very successful. We’re very proud of it. Any other questions of Judge Trockman about the Drug Court? Okay.

Wayne Trockman: As always, I want to thank Council. Its been seven years now, which shows us how fast time goes by, but Council has supported this project from the beginning, even long before we had a report from the national firm showing that it was doing well and doing what we all said that we thought it could do. And we appreciate that every day because we would not be in operation without your help. Thank you.

President Abell: Thank you, Judge.

SUPERIOR COURT SUPPLEMENTAL ADULT PROBATION

President Abell: Does anyone have any questions on the Superior Court Supplemental Adult Probation? I looked at it, I didn’t see any changes in it, specifically. Its on page 181.

BOND

President Abell: Do you want to go to page 200? I don’t know that there’s anything to talk about, but it’s the Bond debt repayment. It looks like we’re going to talk to our Auditor.

Bill Fluty: Bill Fluty, County Auditor. We’re going to do the Bond debt? Page 200, is that correct?

President Abell: Yes.

Bill Fluty: Any questions?

President Abell: That was easy.

Councilmember Raben: We’re just ready to get on to page 7 where we can start doing some cutting.

Bill Fluty: Let’s stop a moment at 197. That’s the USI overpass, and we actually fund that with COIT dollars, 480,000 and also surtax/wheel tax. We’ve got about two and a half years of payments, so we’re getting on the short end of that bond. So its something to think about later on, what to do with that money.

President Abell: That’s good news.

Bill Fluty: There’s some good news.

AUDITOR

REASSESSMENT/AUDITOR

President Abell: Now I think everybody is just dying to get you on page 7. So do you want to defend yourself early on, or do you want us to start asking questions?

Bill Fluty: We’ll just go with the questions.

President Abell: Alright. Does anyone have any questions for Mr. Fluty?

Councilmember Leader: Can you talk a little bit about your maintenance contract? Its gone from 1,200 to 3,500. Its 3540.

Bill Fluty: I think in past years, that copier was, actually the maintenance was paid out of the Commissioners budget. But it made more sense to go ahead since that copier is located, and it’s a new copier, its located in the Auditor’s office, which everybody shares in the building, to actually put that in our budget as opposed to the Commissioners. So that is just a reduction of theirs and an increase in mine.

Councilmember Leader: Do people reimburse you for copies?

Bill Fluty: They don’t, --

Councilmember Leader: I mean to keep track and is there any method of recovering any of that money?

Bill Fluty: For other departments?

Councilmember Leader: Uh-huh.

Bill Fluty: No, we’re not charging back other departments. We do keep track of users. They have a number that they actually punch in to see how much they use. And we use that in our cost allocation that Maximus does to actually bring money back in.

Councilmember Leader: Thank you. And the other question I have is the 3370, the Computer Data Management, $12,000.

Bill Fluty: Yes, that’s a refresh program in our department where we have over the years asked for four to five new computers, rolling out the oldest computers and bringing in four or five new ones. That is also in two places, its in the Reassessment or its in our budget, whichever way you’d like to look at that, or and then, Marsha, I think, it’s actually going to a different direction and actually putting that in a single fund in the Council’s budget, and then I would request that from the Council.

President Abell: So we’d watch them all.

Councilmember Leader: Thank you.

President Abell: Mr. Fluty, what are you going to buy with $10,000 Office Furniture?

Bill Fluty: Well, probably nothing. But my hope was, our furniture has been here since the courthouse moved and we actually put three desks together to make one workstation and actually $10,000 does about five workstations. And I was just going to start at the front counter and just move back over four or five years if that was something we could do in this time frame. Then again, I guess that’s one we’re going to have to look at.

President Abell: Well, I’ll ask Mr. Sutton’s question of you, if you had to cut it somewhere, where would you want to see us start cutting?

Bill Fluty: Well, I guess, most of these are pretty flat, but I guess that’s an area we could cut.

Councilmember Goebel: I would think the furniture now has some character and is quite comfortable.

Bill Fluty: That might be a stretch.

President Abell: Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, I –

President Abell: Do you have a serious question for the Auditor?

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, on Office Furniture, -- I can’t do it. Have you been to the basement yet? Have you gone downstairs to look?

Bill Fluty: Curt, I mean, Jim, yes, I’ve been to the basement to check out the basement.

President Abell: So there’s no furniture in the basement that will meet your needs, is that what you’re telling us?

Bill Fluty: And I think with Curt gone is probably the only reason I had the courage to ask for furniture this year.

President Abell: Does anyone else have a serious question for the Auditor? Thank you. Oh, wait a minute, 158, Reassessment, we don’t have anything to talk about on that? Is that where you moved your computer money too, also?

Bill Fluty: Really, Reassessment mimics my General Fund budget. If you want to fund it in my General Fund or you can fund it in Reassessment, or not fund it, I guess, are the three choices.

President Abell: Thank you, Mr. Fluty. Well, it looks like that concludes today. Has anyone got anything to add to today’s events? We got through pretty good. Its just 11:20. We will meet again in the morning at 9:00 and we’ll recess until then.

(Meeting recessed at 11:20 a.m.)

VANDERBURGH COUNTY COUNCIL

BUDGET HEARINGS

AUGUST 15, 2007

The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 15^th day of August, 2007 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 9:00 a.m. by County Council President Marsha Abell.

President Abell: We’d like to reconvene the budget hearings for 2008, the Vanderburgh County Council. Mr. Goebel would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

(Pledge of Allegiance was given)

President Abell: Good morning to everyone. Councilmen, we will begin with the Vanderburgh County Department of Child Services and the Division of Family Resources, which is on Page 145 in your book. Good morning.

DIVISION OF FAMILY AND CHILDREN

John Schroder: Good morning. I’m John Schroder, Assistant Director with the Vanderburgh County Department of Child Services. And you will notice that in review, I placed pamphlets on your desks that deal with how we came about the budget for the Family and Children’s fund. Also, the Children’s Psychiatric Residential Treatment fund and a requirement of state law that deals with something they call Senate Bill 400, where the amount between the difference we spent between children in need of services and delinquent is placed up there also. The budget is an increase a little bit over last year. But as I, as most of you are aware and I’ve said before, most of these spendings are not discretionary. They’re spent when children have been, when it’s been determined that they’ve been abused and neglected or exploited and we have to either provide services for them as described by the court or pay for their care outside of their personal homes. If I can be of any help I would like to let you know. Have any questions?

President Abell: Just one moment. Ms. Leader, I was going to ask you a question, in fact.

Councilmember Leader: Oh, Ok.

President Abell: Are you aware of how they’re funded?

Councilmember Leader: Not really, and that’s why I was going to ask him if he’d --

President Abell: I was going to ask him if he could explain that to you.

Councilmember Leader: Yeah, because --

President Abell: Ms. Leader’s new.

Councilmember Leader: Virtually every item is increased dramatically.

President Abell: So maybe you can explain to her.

Councilmember Leader: Thank you. That is what I was going to ask.

President Abell: It’s on Page 145.

John Schroder: Okay. Actually, looking at 145, normally what happens is we, what you see printed here, is actually an estimate because the, we have to send our requests through the state to get approval for them before we file them and the auditor prefers to file them. So, what we do is give general estimates at first and they place a greater amount on there and then what we ask is that it be reduced to the amount approved by the director of DCS in Indianapolis, okay? So, those amounts are usually considerably higher if I’m not mistaken. Is that not correct on here? And the differences are, and if you look in your pamphlet for the Department of Child Services and, under Family and Children’s fund, on the back of the second page is actually the total amount of appropriation for that particular fund that we have requested. We actually do get this request in before about the time you end up filing it. But to make sure I give an estimate of what I’m sending to Indianapolis while we prepare what we’ve gone through this for, but it usually doesn’t come back before it’s required to be submitted to the Auditor. So they actually take last year’s and post one and a half times that on the advertisement. Okay?

Councilmember Raben: I’ve got corrected numbers here if everyone wants to take a moment. The first line, 30090, the correct figure is $327,338. 32500 is $3,747,000. 32520 is $7,212,625.

President Abell: Would you give me that number again? What account number is that?

Councilmember Raben: That is 32520 is $7,212,625. 32530 is $17,950. 32540 is $2,864,745. That’s $2,864,745. 32550 is $192,330. 32560 $5,000. 32600 is $4,144,000. 32700 is $15 million, five hundred, $15,500 excuse me. $15,500 yeah.

32920 is $2,000 for a total of $18,528,488. It’s like balancing our legal counsel’s checkbook, isn’t it? $18,528,488.

President Abell: I hope all of the officeholders out there saw that big decrease in your budget here, maybe we’ll make the day short, that short order of today.

John Schroder: Well, actually there, from what was approved last year, there is an increase because we have increased costs for children in institutions, foster homes, we have more of them that we’re placing and also supportive services for those who maybe can be returned to their homes or are not removed from their homes, but are considered to be in a situation where the additional assistance needs to be taken care of.

President Abell: Are you okay, Ms. Leader? Yeah? Okay. Any other questions? Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: None.

President Abell: Thank you.

John Schroder: Okay.

CHILDREN’S PSYCHIATRIC RESIDENTIAL TREATMENT SERVICES

President Abell: From there, did you, do you want to cover the Children’s Psychiatric Center on Page 146, or I think...that’s covered in our folder also.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, let me give you a corrected figure on that one as well. $145,000. That’s on Page 146.

President Abell: Yeah. $145,000 even?

Councilmember Raben: Yes.

President Abell: Okay.

COUNTY ASSESSOR

President Abell: Okay, thank you. County Assessor on Page 53. Good morning, Mr. Weaver.

Jonathan Weaver: Good morning, Council. How you doing?

President Abell: Does anyone, you want, have something you want to tell us first, or do you want us just to attack you first?

Jonathan Weaver: I’ve been an open target all year, so go right at it.

President Abell: Anyone have any questions for Mr. Weaver?

Councilmember Leader: I have a few. Jonathan, good morning.

Jonathan Weaver: Good morning.

Councilmember Leader: If you would explain to us the increases you have in Office Supplies, Other Supplies, Travel, that kind of thing. Contractual Services is up dramatically. Maintenance Contract and Dues and Subscriptions, Office Furniture and Office Machines, just those kind of things where some of those items didn’t exist previously, you spent no money previously. If you could just give us an overview please.

Jonathan Weaver: We’re talking about the Reassessment budget?

Councilmember Leader: Yes.

Jonathan Weaver: Okay, let’s see...

Councilmember Abell: Page 53, right? Isn’t that where we are?

Councilmember Leader: Yes.

Jonathan Weaver: I tell you, my staff makes me look good. They do. They work hard. They’re overworked. A lot of pressure is put on them. If it was up to me they’d all get a $10,000 raise. We need some part-time help. And a lot of that money is gone for part-time help. We’d like to obviously try to get three additional people to work on the GIS mapping parcel maintenance is what it’s called. If you’ll look at some of the property lines they’re not accurate. Someone needs to sit down and do that, and I believe someone does that in Area Plan, but they don’t do that full-time. I would like to have field person, slash, someone who works on appeals. You know we have 9,500 appeals, so office supplies are up because we have to have folders for all them. And then we’re in charge of approving the sales disclosures now. The new law, before, the Auditor collects the money, so we’d like to get some help there. Help out the sales disclosure person in the office. Office Supplies, just because we have 9,500 appeals, like I said, we need folders, labels, pens, clips, I guess. Travel & Mileage, that’s the same as last year. Contractual Services, that was under budgeted this year. That’s for ARC, GIS that’s 6,550. We pay, and I don’t know who decided that, the county office pays for the townships, but anyhow we pay I believe it’s $400 for each township plus $4,000 for the county office for that. And then the Maintenance Contract is based on, we’d like to continue working with Chuck Simons, he’s our commercial/industrial trendor for next year to keep it consistent. He’s doing a great job. Obviously the home owners feeling a lot of the brunt of the taxes and we’re trying to shift that burden away from the homeowners by making sure the commercial/industrial trending is more accurate. So, about $100,000 for that. He’s doing it this year for $108,000 and I’ve talked to Ted about the right ways to go out and bid all of it and whatever. There’s a sales disclosure program we’d like to upgrade to. We got a call on February 27^th on or about that date from this company in Connecticut saying, Oh, on the 28^th or March 1^st your contract expires for the sales disclosure program. Well, what kind of notice is that? And it’s going to cost us $3,500. So we didn’t renew that this year, but we’d like to upgrade that software, make it a little more user-friendly. And then we have TMA, they do our personal property audits. We’ve gotten some bills this year from them so I factored in about $40,000 for that.

President Abell: Ms. Leader, some of these figures that he’s discussed are in Reassessment and also in our General. We’ll decide later, okay?

Jonathan Weaver: Yeah, we didn’t change the General Fund, except for the raises you guys give us, so thanks.

President Abell: Not yet. We haven’t given them yet. Mr. Goebel?

Councilmember Goebel: Jonathan, on the Office Supplies and items like that that you’re requesting, do you foresee the same type of on-slot of appeals next year as we’ve had this year, because seems like that would go down?

Jonathan Weaver: It’s so hard to guess. I would think we’ll get half that number next year. So, maybe around 4,000.

Councilmember Goebel: Thank you.

President Abell: Mr. Weaver, could you revisit what the Maintenance Contract of $143,500 is?

Jonathan Weaver: Yes. That’s, Chuck Simons, he does our commercial/industrial trending this year. We’ve contracted with him for $108,000. We’d like to have him on board for next year just for consistency and because he’s doing such a great job. So, there’s $100,000 factored in there. Now from what I understand that you know, we have to bid it out and all of that sort of thing according to Ted Ziemer, so I’m just asking for it up-front because we’d like to actually begin that in November. You know we began that trending May 1^st of this year, so if we can start it earlier for this year, for 2008 pay 9, you know, I would like to get a jump on that and that gives him more time to do it. He has to finish this year by September 1^st. All the data is due to the state by August 1^st, so we’re already sort of a month behind. We’d like to be on top of things and be trend-setters. If he doesn’t finish it by September 1^st this year, there’s a $1,000 a day penalty in the contract. $40,000 of that’s for TMA, personal property audits. We’ve gotten a few bills this year from them. I’m not even sure honestly how they’re paid for. And then $3,500 for sales disclosures, a new program, maintenance contract there.

President Abell: Thank you. Any other questions? Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: So, the first one was $108,000?

Jonathan Weaver: That would be $100,000. He’s doing it this year for $108,000.

Councilmember Raben: Okay.

Jonathan Weaver: And I’m thinking, you know, if he, we renew his contract or if he wins the bid or whatever for next year, it’ll be lower, I would hope.

President Abell: You may not be able to answer this, but once you have had all commercial properties brought up to date with the new trending, then in the future will we be able to keep up with that?

Jonathan Weaver: It, it’s part of my two-year plan hopefully that this would be the last year that we’ll contract out for commercial/industrial. You know, like I said in the, whatever month that was when I asked you for 100 plus thousand dollars. I think we should be able to do it ourselves. All the townships, myself and we are starting a file in the county office where we should be able to do it ourselves.

President Abell: Okay.

Jonathan Weaver: So, I hope, I can’t promise you, but that’s the goal.

President Abell: Worthy goal. Anyone else? Thank you, Mr. Weaver. I’m sorry, Mr. Shetler, I didn’t see you.

Councilmember Shetler: Just one point. You said something about starting in November of this year.

Jonathan Weaver: Uh-huh.

Councilmember Shetler: But this is for ‘08 monies, though, I mean you wouldn’t be able to do that until at least January 1.

Jonathan Weaver: Well, we’re writing the new contract. He won’t get paid ‘til January 1^st or whatever, the first installment. Will start working. He’s, he’s going to be doing the appeals anyways, there’s going to be one installment that we’re holding back from this current contract until all the appeals for this year pay next year are done. So, that $108,000 that we’re paying this year is broken down into five installments with four being paid, I think it was May 1^st, June 1^st, July 1^st, August 1^st or something like that. And then the fifth installment when all the appeals are done, next year. He’ll be working anyway.

President Abell: Mr. Fluty, is that okay?

Jonathan Weaver: Isn’t that how the contract is worded? I believe, first of the month, he gets paid.

Bill Fluty: I’m not sure how the contract is worded, but we’ll follow it to the letter. So, there’s no doubt of that.

President Abell: Okay.

Jonathan Weaver: Or maybe it’s June 1^st, July 1^st , August 1^st.

Councilmember Shetler: But you can’t, you can’t spend this money until it’s appropriated.

Bill Fluty: Uh-huh.

Jonathan Weaver: Right.

Councilmember Shetler: So we can’t enter into any contractual agreement until --

Jonathan Weaver: Well, that’s why I’m asking for your permission for the money and then we can enter into that contract November 1^st, is the goal, is what I’m saying, so, that he can start working next year.

Councilmember Shetler: I don’t know that you can do that.

President Abell: That’s what I don’t think he can do. I’ll ask Mr. Ahlers.

Jeff Ahlers: Yeah, if you are wanting to enter into a contract in November, what you would need to do is make an appropriation request to come before them in October or something to fund the rest of this year. You know what I’m saying? Because this budget, we won’t get this money until after the first of the year and it wouldn’t be in place yet. So, I’d just suggest that if you’re wanting to do something in November that you go ahead and file appropriation request.

Jonathan Weaver: Ok.

President Abell: Any other questions?

Jonathan Weaver: A lot of this, oh sorry,

President Abell: Go ahead.

Jonathan Weaver: We had, you know, $8,700 from last year’s, that should have come out of last year’s budget that we had to pay this year. We have brought in $1,300 in copy revenue this year. I re-read that TMA contract and saved the county $30,000 this year. They were over-charging us on the personal property audits. And then we brought the website in-house this year, so that saves the taxpayers $1,500 by having Computer Services do it instead of Evansville On-line.

President Abell: Good.

Jonathan Weaver: Sorry to interrupt, but.

President Abell: No, we appreciate that.

Jonathan Weaver: Alright.

President Abell: You know, and Mr. Ahlers is just saying, I think that’s true, if you, if this is approved for next year and you know you’re going to enter into this contract with someone next year you, and you have any money in another account, you might be able to do a transfer in November to go ahead and get started, but when you get to that point, if you’d contact Ms. Deig, I think we can work with you on it.

Jonathan Weaver: Okay, great. Thanks.

PROPERTY TAX ASSESSMENT BOARD OF APPEALS

President Abell: Thank you. Do we have anything on the PTABOA? Did you have anything on PTABOA that you wanted to discuss with us?

Jonathan Weaver: Do you have any questions? Let’s see. That increase was just in case we had more meetings.

President Abell: How many, do you know how many tax appeals you had this year over and above the ones that you, how many you had last year and how many you have this year to work on? I guess you didn’t have last year, but someone had last year. I think you have like 9,000 something.

Jonathan Weaver: Well, we have 9,500 right now. Maybe less than 500 were filed last year anticipating this year.

President Abell: How many did they work on? Do you know? Did they work on 2 or 3,000 or

Jonathan Weaver: Right now, we’re up to, we’ve completed about.

President Abell: No, I mean how many did they do last year? I’m trying to figure out how many meetings you may need this year compared to last year’s meetings.

Jonathan Weaver: We have a monthly. Right now, we’re doing good. I mean right now, you know, 99% of the appeals the taxpayers are winning, so it’s very taxpayer friendly at this point. If that keeps up, very little will go to the PTABOA. We’ve had 12 so far, out of 1,050 that have crossed the desk, my desk.

President Abell: Okay. Any questions? Thank you.

Jonathan Weaver: Thanks.

LOCAL EMERGENCY PLAN COMMISSION

President Abell: County Commission, Page 84. Oh, I’m sorry. Sorry, someone’s going to come before you. You’ll just have to wait Mr. Tornatta. Sorry. The Local Emergency Planning Commission needs to get out of here, I understand. That is on Page 188.

Paul Wagner: Thank you. I appreciate that. This won’t take too long. My name is Paul Wagner. I work with Mead Johnson and I am the Treasurer of the Local Emergency Planning Committee. And just for your own background, I just wanted to tell you what that committee does. It’s purpose is to implement SARA Title III, it’s the community right to know with regards to hazardous materials. We develop and maintain an up-to-date comprehensive emergency plan for our community. That’s this. We receive records information about chemical releases, any kind of spills that are in the county. We collect, manage and provide public access to information on hazardous chemicals in our area. Companies are required to submit this information to the LEPC, as well as the fire departments. And we educate the public about the risks from accidental and routine releases of chemicals and work with facilities to minimize those risks. The committee is composed of volunteers from the Health Department Fire Service, Law Enforcement, hospitals, ambulance, private citizens, industry, local government, the Environmental Protection Agency, Emergency Management Agency and transportation. We get our funding through grants from the state, so it’s more or less a pass-through for the county. We requested $26,500 for 2008 and that goes for training and it goes for education and administrative expenses, primarily. Any questions?

President Abell: Any questions on this?

Councilmember Goebel: And you’re requesting less this year than last, is that correct?

Paul Wagner: I believe that’s true, yes.

Councilmember Goebel: Nice to see.

President Abell: Well, let’s just go to the next page, 189. Oh, I’m sorry. You can, they were both circled. I’m sorry. You’re finished. Thank you.

Paul Wagner: Thank you.

LOCAL DRUG FREE COMMUNITY

President Abell: Do you, do they want to come up, too? You got both of them circled. Wait one more moment, Troy. Local Drug Free Community. There’s no one here. It’s on Page 189. Ok. Let’s jump back up to the County Commission. Page 84.

COUNTY COMMISSIONERS

Troy Tornatta: Good morning. Ok.

President Abell: Does anyone have any questions? I think we’re kind of looking at it for a few minutes here, Troy.

Troy Tornatta: I kind of have a good idea of what you’re going to ask so why don’t you let me run through this real quick. Something that’s not on there that we probably need to look at is, and I don’t need anything right now, we’re going to have a sale, we have a group of properties and a group of houses we’re going to have to sell through a tax sale to the Commissioner’s office. And we will have some money that we will need in demolition, so just to kind of forewarn you, Bill Nix, who couldn’t be here today, because he is at another commissioner function, said that he will actually, it will actually be somewhere in the $4,000 a building range, so we don’t know how many we’re going to have to demolish, but there could be potentially something this year, don’t know. We could leave it at zero if we have to come back to you. I’m just fore-warning you. The self insurance line, we were told to base that about, between five and 10 percent. We went on the low side on the five percent, so trying to keep as much money in the, in the coffers as possible.

Councilmember Raben: One question while we’re on that line.

Troy Tornatta: Sure.

Councilmember Raben: That line has remained constant since 2004. Are you sure we need to make any adjustment in that?

Troy Tornatta: And you can, you can do whatever you want on that. I don’t think, I don’t know that we have any money in that account right now. I don’t show an account balance. So, we’ve paid that money out. They did tell us this year there would be an increase. I don’t know if we’ve shown an increase in the past, so they did say there would be an increase in that particular line item, but I don’t think it’s that big of an issue. If we had to come back for $10,000, then that’s what we’d have to do. Now the Emergency Medical, I think we show that is for AMR. That’s an extended contract and that contract fluctuates. If they don’t live up to their contract standards then essentially they owe us money. If they live up their contract standards then we owe them money. Last month, or quarter. Last quarter, we paid them $60,000 a quarter. Before that, I think they gave us some money back, so it just depends how many runs during the contract. We pulled that up here again, that might be something we can come back and ask you for money. It’s kind of like a telethon today. I’m going to end up giving you some money, okay?

President Abell: Uh-huh.

Troy Tornatta: Then I’m going to ask for it back. Look at the telephone account. We’re going to keep that at 210 with a possibility of, at the end of the year, if we have some monies that come in, if you remember, we’re using the new phone system. In 2009, by midway through 2009, this budget is going to drop almost in half and so we kind of got another year of planning with this type of number; however, we predict that it’ll be about $190,000 this year. So, the only reason I’m keeping this at this number at this time, and we can talk about it before next week, or before we do the cutting over here. The only reason we kept it that low was because Matt Arvay is working with AT&T to try to get reimbursements back. In all the reimbursements he’s gotten, we’ve paid the bill that’s been submitted by AT&T. Their, it’s like cryptic, trying to read what they’ve got, so his people are reading through it and we’re actually getting reimbursements every month from At&T. Also, we’re paying what other offices have in their budgets. So we’re going to get some money back. We only have $20,000 in the line item right now. That will not get us through the year, but when we get some reimbursements from other offices, I think we’ll be just fine. Should carry, by the end of the year, we might be carrying about $20,000 over, so I think we’ll be okay there. Alright. Let’s get some good news. I think we have, I was not able to, to be a part of writing this budget up, but I was a part of helping the Council kind of work on this budget. And one of the things I’ve been working on is to find out the televised meetings. We had it in there at $50,000. As we see it in our office, we should be able to pare that down. We’re looking at about $900 a month. And so, if we, if we went over a little bit and said $15,000, I think that we’d be fine in that line item. Keep track. Okay. Going down to consultant, if you look, we went up $100 in printing, from $100 to $200. We don’t have anything. I take that back. We have, we will end up with nothing in that account this year and beg, borrow and steal, I think we’ve had it $100 for a while; if we take it up to $200, I don’t think we’re going to break the bank on that.

Councilmember Raben: What line was that?

President Abell: 3410.

Troy Tornatta: 3410, Printing.

President Abell: Page 86.

Troy Tornatta: Okay. Legal Advertising. I’m okay if you take that back to $20,000. We do all the legal advertising. A lot of that is ordinance work. I don’t know how much on the ordinance side that we’re going to plan on, but I know it was pretty hot and heavy over the past few years, and I don’t know if I see as much of that, but we do all the legal advertising for the whole county. So, we can pare that back to 20, just like last year. The consultant, and that is, the consultant is Maximus. Just to kind of fill you in on what they do. It’s kind of every year. Maximus, we hire them. They are a minimum of I believe up to $10,000 and Maximus is a, bills of $12,000-$12,500, something along those lines.

Bill Fluty: Well, they actually have a contract for this $15,750.

Troy Tornatta: Okay.

Bill Fluty: And actually they’re in our office and the Clerk’s office and many other offices doing cost accounting and actually through their efforts we get reimbursed between $120,000 and $140,000, so it’s a win-win situation.

Troy Tornatta: Right. So, it’s a, we want to have them on board. That’s good for the county. Now, looking down at the YMCA. I would like to propose to this Council that we think about matching what the city does at some point. I think the city is $14 per individual that wants to enjoy health and fitness. We only have a contract with the YMCA. And I know this might not please our Auditor, but I’d like to open that up to other health clubs, just because you go to a particular gym doesn’t mean you should have to sign up with the YMCA. Nothing against the YMCA. We probably should look at seeing what comparative offers we can get from the different health clubs and then change that line to health and fitness. Just something to think about. I’d like to entertain that to the council, but I think it’s an opportunity to get people into the fitness side, not necessarily clarify where they have to go.

Councilmember Raben: Let me stay there just a moment. Troy, did we ever see any numbers on who’s actually utilizing in that YMCA benefit today?

Troy Tornatta: To do what now? I mean, right now we’ve spent, we’re at $20,000, we’re about, 50% of that budget’s gone.

Councilmember Leader: How many people (inaudible).

Troy Tornatta: I don’t have that number.

Councilmember Raben: I guess that’s what I’m curious about. Are we just paying them a lump sum through the course of the year or, you know, quarterly, monthly?

Troy Tornatta: Monthly, isn’t it?

Marissa Nichoalds: It’s monthly.

Councilmember Raben: It’s monthly.

Troy Tornatta: But we pay a monthly payment of those who are in there, and I think we pay $11 a person.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. So, are we paying per head or are we paying just a fee?

President Abell: Marissa, come to the microphone, please.

Marissa Nichoalds: Well, I believe that they offer a, an individual plan and a family plan, so some employees have the family plan and some have the individual plan. So we get a print out of who has signed up to join the Y and we take that number times 11and write a claim to the YMCA.

Councilmember Raben: We’re paying per head?

Marissa Nichoalds: Uh-huh.

Councilmember Raben: Ok. Thank you.

Councilmember Leader: And Marissa, did you say it’s 100?

Marissa Nichoalds: It’s about 150. It varies depending on the month.

Councilmember Leader: Thank you. And that 150 might be a family?

Marissa Nichoalds: Correct.

Councilmember Leader: It might be 6 people within, okay. Yeah. Thanks.

Troy Tornatta: For instance, there, it might be a single membership might be $33 whatever the case is. A family might be $49. We’re still paying $11. The thing I’d like to see is, I’d like to see us mirror what the city does and not have any issue there. And I’d also like to see us expand, if an outfit wants to come in and work on the parameters maybe of what the Y’s done that works with the county. Then, we’d change that YMCA line to health and fitness line, if we’re truly going to provide health and fitness for our employees. Alright. EAP. Does anybody have any question on that? Anybody know what it is? The EAP line is a line that we paid that will actually have, if somebody needs some counseling, we’ll pay up to three times, three visits to the counselor and we pay that out of that line item. I have lost the rest of my notes, but that’s okay.

Councilmember Leader: Troy, what about that Postage and Freight line 3120?

Troy Tornatta: I’ll get there. You said 3120? Okay, we have $133,000 left in that account right now. So, if you kind of went on halvsies, we’re going to have enough for this year it looks like. And, of course, if you take our December, which is what we’ve notoriously done, we’ll definitely be okay. And so, if you wanted to call that 380, and then we’d either have to come back or, or if we had monies left over, this would just go back in that account, we can do that, as well.

Councilmember Leader: Do you think they were taking into account the increase in postage costs, or that $25,000?

Troy Tornatta: In fact, I think we did last year, if I’m not mistaken.

Councilmember Leader: So you think we can take it back to 380?

Troy Tornatta: I would say that we can take it back to 380. If we have to come back, we have to come back.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, can we talk about Voices for I-69?

Troy Tornatta: That road’s being built and it’s worked on with the governor. I didn’t believe in it last year and I don’t believe in it this year. So, that can be taken out of that account as far as I’m concerned.

Councilmember Leader: Why is that $10,000 there then?

Troy Tornatta: I didn’t write this budget. The $10,000 is there because that’s what they’ve requested over the past few years. We believe that this road is coming. We believe that the push is there. So that’s why we cut it out last year and I don’t believe that we’re, I believe we’re on the same track that this road’s coming; it’s going to be here. The governor’s pushing it and I think all the Commissioner’s are behind it. I think there’s a lot of people behind the road. I think you’re going to see it, whether we pony up $10,000 or not. It’s not coming any quicker.

President Abell: Didn’t Mr. Goebel, Mr. Raben, did either one of you have any further comment?

Councilmember Raben: Not on that line. I mean I agree with what he says. These funds were used to, in a lot, for a lot of different things to lobby to see that the project move forward, and it is in fact moving forward so.

Troy Tornatta: And I’ve talked and got the okay from Commissioner Nix that he believes that, that line could be cut if need be.

President Abell: Wouldn’t that economic development group have a part of this, and they can take care of this instead of us having a special line item for it?

Troy Tornatta: The, well, I think they are taking care of it. GAGE and --.

President Abell: So, it’s not going to be lost in the shuffle. We’re just not going to put another $10,000 in.

Troy Tornatta: Don’t get me wrong. We’re not saying we’re not behind it. I don’t think we said it last year on this Council.

President Abell: Just don’t see any reason to fund it?

Troy Tornatta: We just don’t see any reason to put that extra $10,000 in that when we have other avenues. I think we’re kind of on board with everything.

President Abell: I agree with you. Okay, Mr. Goebel, did you have --

Councilmember Goebel: It’s been covered.

President Abell: Okay.

Troy Tornatta: Dues & Subscriptions, that’s the AIC, the Auditor has a line item that we pay for the Association of Auditor’s. So, that takes care of that $10,000. We’ve got about $354 in it which has been notoriously, the number that we end up with. So, in fact that takes care of the prescription drug card plan that we’ve had. And yesterday we got a report that we, as Vanderburgh County, has saved over $160,000 in about three and a half months. So, 8,000 users of the card, we’ve really been successful. It’s about the sixth highest rating in the nation right now. So, we, I think we’ve done a good thing for the people of Vanderburgh County. Alright. Occu/Med, you can take that back to $20,000.

Councilmember Leader: What’s that number please?

Troy Tornatta: It’s 3760. We roughly have $17,000 in that account. Now, we’re not recommending that you take all of that money, but the one thing that this is, that’s for the drug testing, if you remember, we have that line item in the highway garage, I believe, Mike? Occu/Med? They get reimbursement for some of those monies obviously. So, we took it out of ours, but we were talking about our employees that are in this office, or in this building. If we are doing any random drug testing or testing before they are hired.

Councilmember Shetler: Troy, is this for random or is this for new applicants?

Troy Tornatta: Both.

Councilmember Shetler: Do we screen those pretty good to make sure that, you know, that we’re not just sending some guy off, you know, automatically as soon as he fills out an application?

Troy Tornatta: And I will have to defer that to somebody else. I will not have the answer to that question at this time.

Councilmember Shetler: Alright. Thank you.

Marissa Nichoalds: I believe, once they are actually offered the job, they have 24 or 48 hours to take the drug test. So, you are not required to take the drug test until you are actually offered the job. So, you are not screening everyone that applies.

Councilmember Shetler: Do you have very many of them that fail it at that point?

Marissa Nichoalds: I do not actually receive the results from our office. Council does.

President Abell: We need to change our tape.

TAPE CHANGED

Troy Tornatta: Okay, we’ll get done with this and then I think we need to go back a minute. Youth Services, this is an ask and not a contract. Any asks, I will point out. This is an ask for them, for the additional monies. We’ve done 20,000 in the past, they asked for another 5,000. And then down at the bottom, 4433 Southwest Indiana Disaster Resistance, that as well, is an ask. For that money, we have no contract. Just to clarify, the Office Machines, 4220 is for the Commissioners copy machine. If you look up at the top there is 3620, it says Copy Machine Lease, that’s for the Auditor’s big machine and they have a secondary machine. The one thing I’m trying to work with Purchasing, and I think the Council needs – I charge you with trying to get this done, is to try and get the purchasing person, Debbie, and I’ve talked with her and she’s working on this, to get a contract on all copy machines and to do it like you’ve done the computers, get a contract on all copy machines and an agreement with how they’re going to be fixed and replaced and those types of things under one bid. We’re looking at the city’s right now, we’re looking at EVSC’s right now to see if we can get in on a bid with one of those companies so that we’re paying one bill as opposed to going to different offices and everybody cuts their own deal. I think its going to save us a lot of money. So we’ve dealt with this in the past in some different areas like computers, and I think it would be well worth our time to look into trying to get some of those issues satisfied. Any other questions?

President Abell: Okay, yeah, let’s talk about EARC.

Troy Tornatta: In the past, we’ve done $279,000. I think that we’ve seen, they’ve seen their budget shrink from the state, but the county’s seen their budget shrink from the state and from the federal, that is an ask. That is not a contract. And so, I’m going to tell you the asked, I’ll tell you the contract. The contract we normally have is for 279,000.

President Abell: I saw their video and discussed this with them and obviously, it’s a very worthy organization. You know, some of those people that work at EARC would be on the welfare rolls if they didn’t have that position at EARC. Is there any money available in the Welfare to Work money that we might be able to use in this position?

Troy Tornatta: I will tell you, we’re going to call that Initiative Based Assistance. That is probably a great discussion at some time with a couple few people from the Council and a Commissioner. I would say that there could be something entertained. We’d have to get into some numbers pretty deep, to see if that were there. I think that the county has done a great service to their organization with the 279,000 and been consistent. The state is the only one that has went down, we’ve always maintained a certain level although its not been on any type of CPI or not continued in an upward fashion. We have been there consistently instead of cutting at all. But I would entertain that, if that’s something the Council wants to look at.

President Abell: I think it would be interesting to have the County Attorney maybe take a look at what the requirements are and what our limitations are. But, if not, just a direct financial assistance to EARC, possibly fund two or three of their workers that would be on the welfare roll, we would pick them up under Welfare to Work money. Just a thought of a place we might be able to go to find some money to help them out somewhat.

Troy Tornatta: Well, I was on the board for several years. I have compassion for their organization and think they do a great job and they’re starting to diversify in areas which helps them out more than it did when they were just kind of a caretaker organization. So if you want to get your Council to talk to our Council and try and work out the logistics of it, we can work out the financial side if there is something there and we don’t have anything in its place, I would entertain that and would take that back to the other Commissioners.

President Abell: Okay, Mr. Raben, did you have something further on the EARC? Anyone have anything else they want to discuss on this? I have a couple of questions then. I’m taxing my memory here, but a couple years ago, or I guess it was in our last budget, in fact, and I see its zeroed, the Veterans Burial Allowance, did we move that out of your budget and put that in someone else’s budget?

Troy Tornatta: To the Veterans budget.

President Abell: Okay, so we are still, okay. My other question is, where is the Economic Development money?

Troy Tornatta: I’ll show you.

President Abell: Oh, we’re not there yet.

Troy Tornatta: Now, before we get out of the Commissioners budget, I do want to pass this along, before I was able to chime in on the budget, I’ve really been working to try and see what opportunities we have to even bring more money to the county. And I’ve probably, to date, in the past 20 minutes here, given you over $100,000. What I would like to look at is to look at possibly getting a grant writer, not a person that writes grants, I want an official grant writer and potentially put that person in the County Commissioners office. This is going to serve as two positions. The first position is obviously going to be the grant writer position. That’s going to be the person that’s really going to be the general grant writer, if you have a grant, that comes across his or her desk and I’d like to see that happen sooner than later so we have an opportunity to bring some real dollars to our county. The second would be as essentially a body or a fill-in up there in the Commissioners office when there is vacations or individuals that go out. Over the past several years, we’ve had a Commissioner in there full-time. That’s not saying we’re always going to have that, and as I’ve looked at potentially who could be in the Commissioners office, of the two that are in there, we cannot be full-time. And the one that potentially could come in there, which there has been a list, but I don’t know if they could be full-time. So that would put zero full-time people in the office, which it’s a part-time position anyway. These are some counties that we’ve checked with that actually have grant writers or some of them don’t have grant writers and they tell what they do and how they went on with the program. Of the last grant writer I heard about, it was a lady and she got in there and right as soon as she got in, brought $3,000,000 to their county. That will more than take care of a salary of what I am anticipating, somewhere around $45,000, plus benefits. So I bring that to you just to say that I think it would be good for the county. I think we’ve been really needing that position for a long time and it would serve two positions in the Commissioners office.

President Abell: Could this be a joint city/county person?

Troy Tornatta: I think this person is going to be so busy and he’s going to be doing so much, that we’ll have to hire somebody else and that would be potentially a city person, and they would have to work together. And it might end up being a city/county person, move that person to Metro Development even into another office. And that’s a wait and see. I’d like to start small, see what we can work out.

President Abell: Okay. Mr. Raben? Oh, Mr. Goebel.

Councilmember Goebel: Troy, obviously, if we more than make up the salary and benefits, this could be a boon for the county. Do you have any idea of what the amounts are or we’ve already gotten in grants without having this person?

Troy Tornatta: Well, what you have, you have, as I said, you have grant writers and then you have people who write grants. I’m more focused on what we lost by the people who maybe don’t write grants as effectively as somebody who does it professionally. And I don’t know what that number is, but that’s kind of what I’m worried about. And, in fact, this person, I would like to check every grant that’s written to make sure that everything is in line. This person knows how people are affected by grants. These grant writers really do a good job. Then our staff in the Commissioner’s office said that they would like to learn how to do this, and if we could have a staff that knows how to be grant writers, I mean, that would be a heck of a deal for Vanderburgh County.

President Abell: Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, I, over the years have kind of advocated a grant writer and I see a real need for something like this. We’ve got a lot of different areas: Burdette Park, you know, just so many different needs for a grant writer. And I’m not so sure that to the tune that maybe you’re talking about, but I could probably be swayed into changing my mind. But, you know, a lot of grant writers, really good ones, work on commission.

Troy Tornatta: Yep.

Councilmember Raben: You know, and it might be 2% of what the grant is that they secure. And I think to get somebody really good, really powerful at what they do, that might be what you need to do. But I also understand the need for possibly more staff, so I mean, I think I hear what you’re saying. I don’t know if I necessarily agree with how you’re going about doing it, but I think, you know, I think we can work something out.

Troy Tornatta: Well, I agree with you, that I think that at some point, you could have somebody ask for a percentage, but the reason I did this study was just to show that in the areas where they think its very useful and they’ve gotten a lot of bang for their buck, that individual. And the ones, 32 to 33,000, of those I’ve heard, its been 40's to mid 40's. and I think the deal is, they’re taking the buy-out as opposed to the pay-out. And what I mean by buy-out is, they’re taking the security that they’re going to get paid every week and that that check is rolling over and they’re going to get benefits as opposed to – and if they’re a full-time person, obviously, going by the guidelines we’ve set. But as opposed to working on a one percent situation where they may or not get the grant they need depending on how tight years are. So we will entertain whatever measure is there. We would like to think that, we’d like to come in somewhere around 35 to 45,000.

President Abell: We’d probably submit that to Job Study.

Councilmember Leader: May I comment?

President Abell: Yes.

Councilmember Leader: As you know, I’ve worked with a lot of grant writers. We’ve talked about this briefly, and I just want to encourage you on the side of caution, because even though a person says they’re a professional grant writer, all grant writers aren’t created equal.

Troy Tornatta: Right.

Councilmember Leader: And one of the big jobs they need to provide you with is the ability to research the possibilities of grants and the creativity of writing the grant combined with the ability to research all of the possible grants, is a skill that not many people have.

Troy Tornatta: And I think that’s where I differentiate a person that writes grants versus a grant writer. And so, point well taken, and we will, this person will go through the wringer kind of to prove to us that they can really do what they’re supposed to do.

President Abell: Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, I might point out, last year, we did do this with the Knight Township Fire Department, and they wrote, the gal up there in Huntingburg wrote the grant and got paid a percentage. And it worked out very well. I think it brought in about a half a million dollars or something if I recall correctly on that. So I think it’s a good idea. I like the idea of the percentage, though, because its kind of like a commission sales person, it doesn’t cost you much and their incentive is to keep moving, keep going at it so that they can get paid and they can eat. And they have a tendency to bring in a lot more income for you.

Troy Tornatta: I think that, I’ve heard it both ways. And I agree with you, you’re going to have somebody that’s motivated. I think that there are those people, there are two different people that are grant writers. And we’ve discussed it with some people in checking into this. There are some that really love their job. I might not want to be a librarian, but there are people that love to be a librarian and they love to do the job. And I might not want to do certain things, and they really love to do it. And no commission on earth would get them to do their job any better. But I think there are going to be two different types of people that will go through the screening process. But as you pointed out, it brought $500,000 to our community that we didn’t have before. And that was because you hired a professional grant writer to do that. And I think that that was, obviously, it helped us out as a county.

President Abell: Anything further?

Troy Tornatta: That’s the Commissioners.

President Abell: Okay.

Troy Tornatta: CCD?

CCD

President Abell: Any questions?

Troy Tornatta: There will be questions.

President Abell: Page 143.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, yeah, I guess, I have a few different questions. If you could, let’s cover Buildings & Equipment, first.

Troy Tornatta: Now what’s that listed in yours? 250?

President Abell: Yes. 250,000, yes, I think he’s asking.

Troy Tornatta: That was an ask.

President Abell: Who is asking?

Troy Tornatta: That is actually, that is actually a three-bay service shop at the highway garage.

President Abell: Okay.

Councilmember Raben: And with that, what would be the need for the old service area?

Troy Tornatta: There’s height restrictions. All I’ll say is that was an ask and that was done with the budget before I got my hands on it. And I love Mike to death.

Councilmember Raben: The Energy Savings Contract, is the correct figure the –

Troy Tornatta: 567,808.

Councilmember Raben: Park & Playground?

Troy Tornatta: Park & Playground, okay, that is for Burdette Park, and there’s a couple of things to look at. We have not done some – we’ve actually taken some projects away from Burdette Park to get the Highway garage. It might be a vice versa year, if it can be. What we’re looking at is, originally, that was 400,000, and that was to buy a $35,000 hybrid truck. We think that we could just buy a regular truck for 23,000. That was 17,000 for an RTV Kubota. They get about 70 miles to the gallon instead of buying two or three trucks, which they probably need out there, we’re going with these little RTV Kubotas. They have drop gates, any dirt work, gravel work, any type of hauling that we do, we can do with those. Seventy miles to the gallon. We’re cutting our gas rates, obviously. And the trucks, haven’t had any trouble with. We’ve got one right now and he’s looking for another one. We have $90,000 for a main office exterior renovation covering log siding, with chinking to match the Discovery Lodge, rework eaves and all exposed logs and cedar, new entry doors and pavilion doors, new garage doors, the main office building was built in 1973, outside siding is painted, T1-11 plywood, it is starting to rot and build up with paint. This is also part of the ten year plan and if you remember, when we hit that ten-year plan, there was a lot of new things to go out to Burdette Park. We’re almost finished with our ten year plan ahead of time. And that was 90,000. The other was 65,000 for new signs in the park, front entrance, Red Bank Road, Broadway, and signs throughout the park to all match. That’s one of the things they said in the ten year plan, we did not have signs that match. We could not signify that the park was essentially together when you went to other parts of the park. So this will at least let you know when you’re at Burdette Park, all the signs will match. The total of those four items would be 195,000. The only, when it got up to 400,000, which was originally budgeted, that was $170,000 for construction of a new chalet. I mean, the more chalets we build out there, the more revenue we produce. There’s no question about that. That would just be something we –

Councilmember Leader: How much was that, again, Troy? I’m sorry.

Troy Tornatta: 170,000. We lost $15,000. The only loser this year was at the campground. We are taking measures right now to build that back up. There are some provisions that were in the Commissioners office that were set back in 2000, I believe, in 2001, that set on a night’s stay, we’re going to readdress that and make sure because there’s a lot of incoming stayers that are going to be working on Mt. Vernon plants and in certain areas, and we want to make sure that we can maximize that campground as much as possible without compromising the campground. So we’re going to be working on that and hopefully we’ll build the revenues. But the rest of the park is doing great.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, I did skip the Old Courthouse Contractual.

Troy Tornatta: Old Courthouse Contractual is for $100,000. That’s to work on the Wedgewood Room. The Old Courthouse, County Courthouse Preservation Master Plan, Dennis Au is sinking his heart into this document to try and get us not only itemized notes on what things can be fixed up, but prioritized notes. One of the things we’re working on is the Wedgewood Room. Commissioner Nix is totally behind this concept. He wants to try and get that room up to date and we’re going to spend 100 and the preservation society will spend 100.

Councilmember Raben: Another perfect example of a need for a grant writer.

Troy Tornatta: I agree.

Councilmember Raben: On the Energy Savings Contract, Bill, how many more years do we have on that?

Troy Tornatta: Ten.

Councilmember Raben: And my last question, which I don’t see in here, Sheriff’s cars.

Troy Tornatta: That was, this is how I got it. So we are working on, for those of you who don’t know, ES & S, I believe that’s on here too, is it not?

President Abell: It is.

Troy Tornatta: ES & S is the contract for the voting machines. That goes away after this year, if I’m not mistaken. So we’ll see $600,000 in this account. Now, I don’t know if – I’m in negotiation with the Sheriff on some issues, so I can get back to you on that note.

President Abell: Other questions?

Councilmember Shetler: Did you say that 170,000 for that new chalet is out?

Troy Tornatta: No, well, it was only listed at 200,000 in this contract, I mean, in the budget, so I think that’s probably something between now and next time you get together, we need to find out what the emphasis is, what we want to put our money in. At this point, Steve Craig said that he could hold off on the signs if we want to do something else. I think he needs a truck. His truck is pretty old, but we can even hold off on the Kubota vehicle. I think probably the chalet is a good opportunity to look at revenues, where you won’t get that from a truck.

Councilmember Shetler: Okay, and I have some questions on that chalet and I don’t know if Steve would be better to ask on that, on those revenues. I guess basically my question would be, and I don’t know if its broken down per chalet or if you have it broken down – how many chalets do we have, currently?

Steve Craig: At the present time, we have six.

Councilmember Shetler: We have six, and how much revenue do those six bring in on an annual basis?

Steve Craig: I’d have to break it out of the buildings. Our buildings right now, with our rental buildings and the chalets, approaching 300,000.

Councilmember Shetler: Okay, and then how many other buildings do we have that are included with that six chalets?

Steve Craig: We probably have another 12 of them, some of them seasonal, --

Councilmember Shetler: Is that including the Discovery Lodge, then, with that?

Steve Craig: That includes all rental buildings.

Councilmember Shetler: Okay, if you could get a figure for us, though, to break that down on how much the chalets bring in on an annual basis?

Steve Craig: Yes, I can.

Councilmember Shetler: Alright, thank you.

President Abell: Other questions?

Troy Tornatta: Is the campground part of the rental?

Steve Craig: Yes.

Troy Tornatta: And the campground lost 15,000, so we’ll get that to you, so that’s part of it.

President Abell: Mr. Goebel, did you have a question?

Councilmember Goebel: Just on the chalets, what’s the rate of renting those? How often do they sit idle?

Steve Craig: For the four or five month period, they do not sit idle at all, and for weekends all through the year, we could always use more for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Probably the least rented time is January, February and in March it picks back up. But with the success of the Discovery Lodge and the large events and weddings that we have, they usually rent out immediately. There’s a lot of out of town guests, and it’s a way to accommodate them, especially in the summertime, it’s a win-win situation because when they come in for these events and that, the kids go swimming and play miniature golf, use the whole park, so not only the county of Vanderburgh is getting revenue off of the tourism, so is Burdette.

Troy Tornatta: How much do they rent for?

Steve Craig: The chalets are 108 without a Jacuzzi and they’re 120 with a Jacuzzi.

President Abell: Per night?

Steve Craig: And they sleep up to eight people.

President Abell: Per night?

Steve Craig: Per night.

Councilmember Goebel: Do you usually stay in the one with the Jacuzzi?

Steve Craig: No.

Troy Tornatta: Don’t answer that.

Councilmember Raben: Just one comment that may be way out there, so try to hold back your laughter, but you know, one thing we might consider at some point with Burdette Park, something along the lines of what I think the zoo has, like the Friends of Mesker Park Zoo, maybe an independent organization or group that could spearhead fund-raising and whatnot for Burdette Park. I don’t even know where you’d begin with that but, --

President Abell: Well, does the Parks Foundation contribute to Burdette Park or do they just handle city parks?

Troy Tornatta: City parks.

President Abell: So the Parks Foundation does nothing for Burdette – well, that’s probably the place to go is go to the Parks Foundation and tell them they should help do some things, because that’s not a city, that’s a not-for-profit organization, that’s not a city entity.

Councilmember Raben: Again, I don’t know how well that would carry, but its –

President Abell: Well, I don’t think it would carry bad, I used to be on that board. I don’t –

Troy Tornatta: There are enough people on the west side that appreciate Burdette Park, that I don’t think its out of line to at least entertain it. Because anytime anything happens out there at Burdette Park, we’re the first ones to hear about it. You hear about it, I know Steve hears about it. So there are a lot of people that are very interested in that park’s well-being.

Councilmember Raben: So I guess I might be offering that as a challenge to the Commission to somehow try to put something like that together.

Troy Tornatta: I don’t think that’s out of line, I think that we could address it.

Steve Craig: If you get that grant, you could probably get that started.

Troy Tornatta: Seriously, these are points that I’m looking at. We spend a lot of money on activities on the general public and there are different opportunities like the bike path, maybe we don’t spend that out of CCD or we don’t spend that out of Riverboat monies because those are monies that we could spend on anything and save for the rainy days. But maybe we could get everybody behind a grant for a couple million dollars that would take us farther along on that bike path and truly be something for the health, the well being of our citizens. So if that’s something we could address, a grant writer, I’m on board.

Councilmember Raben: The list just keeps getting longer, doesn’t it?

Troy Tornatta: It does. And trust me, this person will be inundated and will be looking, but if we get a couple million dollars, we could have three people in an office. Hint, hint.

President Abell: I was just going to say, other questions, but go ahead.

DRAINAGE BOARD

Troy Tornatta: Drainage Board?

President Abell: That’s pretty easy.

Troy Tornatta: Okay, thank you.

President Abell: Does anybody – no.

Troy Tornatta: There’s nothing –

President Abell: No, there’s nothing on the Drainage Board.

RIVERBOAT

President Abell: Riverboat, 127.

Troy Tornatta: 127. Okay, now you get your Economic Development money.

President Abell: Yes.

Troy Tornatta: We are paying, I believe, the Economic Development side is paying for GAGE and the regional economic development, so we’re paying it out of this line item.

President Abell: Its about 150 a piece, is that correct?

Troy Tornatta: Yes.

President Abell: Can you explain to people who might be watching this on television what the difference in these two organizations are?

Troy Tornatta: I would love to do that.

President Abell: I would love to have you do that.

Troy Tornatta: And I would officially love to tell you on a different day than today.

President Abell: How about before we decide whether or not we’re going to let you have this money?

Troy Tornatta: Well, okay. One is a regional and one is a local. And we are obviously, we have talked about it, hashed about it when I was on Council, on how we’re going to fund it and what exactly we are going to do. I have not been privy to those numbers because of prior administration changes, so I will tell you that I will be a part of this group and, in fact, Councilman Shetler, you’re on one of those groups right now, is that correct? He might be able to fill you in more on that than I would at this time.

President Abell: I’d like to see budgets for both of these organizations because, as I recall, when we had Vision-e, which is no longer here, part of the budget was for a health club membership for the director and I don’t want to see that ever again on anybody’s budget. So I did ask for it, I haven’t had it sent to me yet. So maybe you might jiggle some chains over there and tell them I want to see that budget.

Troy Tornatta: Sure, and I would say that between somebody that’s on the board and if I’m going to be on the board, which we’ve been working through that, if that’s going to be the case, then I can get that information and bring it back, but I can’t say I’ll do it before budget hearings end. But I would be happy to bring it back and then we can address that however. But I think its in our best interest to be a part of these two groups and to champion them, move them along because its going to help us in the long run.

President Abell: Just as long as they realize we are going to look at their budgets.

Troy Tornatta: I think that that’s a great point and I would be in the same shoes.

President Abell: Thank you. Any other questions on Riverboat?

Councilmember Raben: I have one quick one. On the Infrastructure line, I don’t know if there’s any big plans for that in the future, but, you know, I might need to sit down because I think with what’s requested in CCD, maybe too much, we might have to shuffle something into this.

Troy Tornatta: Well the one, we made a resolution last night and I think that, or afternoon, and in the meeting, the Commissioners just wanted to set forth that we are behind the University Parkway and you’re going to hear more about that when John comes up or I don’t know if any of it is in Mike’s budget, but you’re going to hear about pushing that along. Now we’re only going to get about $350,000 this year from the federal government, which is not what we asked for, and not what we thought we would get. But because of the switch in administrations, we’re going to see that. The one thing we did commit on last night is that we want to push all three phases of this project as soon as possible into one right-of-way purchase phase. I think we need to say that not only for our federal government, for our state to know we are serious about what we’re doing. But we want to say to the Council that anything that goes toward that, that’s our number one priority. We don’t want to be swayed from that. The other thing, we do want to pass along, and we were not able to do this in a resolution yesterday, but we do want to say that we are all for working with USI on the bike path. We want to make sure that the money is coming from the right place. And we want to make sure that its not taken away from other initiatives that we put at a higher priority. So we want to work with Dr. Hoops. He’s done a fantastic job of working with us on land, but as kind of due diligence, we need to come through with the plan that we originally set forth. And I have not been behind that program but mainly its been because of the financing. So if we can get, or if we got a grant writer or got somebody who could get us a grant or we got grants from the state to get that job done, we’re going to be behind that program as well. So just kind of telling you what we’re looking at and we really want to work with the Council to tell you what our priorities are, so you guys aren’t trying to find out where we’re going.

Councilmember Raben: You’re preaching to the choir.

President Abell: Yeah, hate to read it in the newspaper.

Troy Tornatta: Its going to get better.

President Abell: I hope so.

Councilmember Shetler: Along those lines I will say, I think its very optimistic to think that no matter how good the grant writer is, that we’re going to get any federal funds for that. And there’s a couple of reasons. One, we were turned down last year and the second thing is, since that time, you know, with the Greenway project that’s been endorsed by the Commissioners and now by the Council, you know, we’re in conflict a bit with the Greenway as far as competition, them trying to get money, and they’re not going to allow two different sections of this county, from what I’ve been told. So I think we’re going to have a real difficult time getting any federal funds for that project. I just don’t, it’s a long time down the road.

Troy Tornatta: To me, its in the commitment and its in the gentleman’s agreement and we have to start putting ourselves in the position where we can agree with that Greenway Passage group on what they’re going to do and what our plans are and how we’re going to mesh and meld the two. I did not want to start this project. But unfortunately, this project is started and we have an agreement with the president of one of our major universities in town that was a gentleman’s agreement. And I have to honor those agreements even though I didn’t want to start the agreement, but it started, I have to honor the agreement. And how I want to do that is with funds that can be outside of funds that we’d spend on other issues. Therefore, we can spend some more money, possibly or potentially, on a Greenway Passage that would go out to the west side, maybe even connect up to the, what was the original plan to connect up to the Greenway and make it a big unit throughout the community for health and fitness.

President Abell: Any other questions or comments?

Troy Tornatta: Just, let me read into the record what we have as account balance 7/31 Economic Development 306,447. The Initiative Based Assistance Program $426,396, and the Infrastructure/Drainage, we have $385,240. Some of those will be spent, potentially 66,000 will leave the Economic Development to go to GAGE and to the other regional. Want to do Superintendent of County Buildings?

President Abell: Go back to Initiative Based Assistance, what did you say that was?

Troy Tornatta: 426,396.

President Abell: Is your balance in there right now?

Troy Tornatta: 7/31. And that will go down each month.

President Abell: Okay.

SUPERINTENDENT OF COUNTY BUILDINGS

President Abell: Superintendent of County Buildings, page 95. We’re jumping around because he’s up here. Any questions?

Troy Tornatta: If you look at Other Operating, which is 3510, you can back that down to a thousand.

President Abell: Good.

Troy Tornatta: We would like to keep the Repairs & Grounds, and this is from Commissioner Nix, the mechanical guy. He’s been in the building, he’s assessed it, he really thinks the courthouse is in great shape. He said, however, as old as the building is, there are going to be issues that we’re going to need to look at for repairs. And in that line item, we’re probably looking at around $2,500 just to set back. Now here again, I’ve been on this board long enough to know that we can always come back and ask for it if we have an emergency situation. But $2,500 in that building is not a heck of a lot to ask for a contingency plan for any type of issue. So that’s –

President Abell: So you want to put 2,500 in line item 3550?

Troy Tornatta: Yeah, and it should be in your book.

President Abell: Its at zero in our books.

Troy Tornatta: Its at zero? We can come back and ask, its just a – another thing we can do is, we could pull it from Building Supplies or something of that nature.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, I do have one question, on the Buildings & Groundskeeper, what all does that line cover?

Troy Tornatta: I think its temporary help, if I’m not mistaken. Yeah, that’s a part-time person that goes over there and will open doors and unlock doors in the event that somebody is on vacation.

Councilmember Raben: I think this person covers weekends like for a craft show and stuff like that?

Marissa Nichoalds: Right, right.

Troy Tornatta: If you look at Utilities, I don’t know why we don’t take it back to the 100. We’re going to have $52,857 in that account as of 7/31, so we’ll have four months to look at that. We’re averaging about $11,000 a month in expenses. So that’s a place where you could possibly take and then if we needed it back, we’ll have to come back.

President Abell: Okay, any other questions? Okay.

VETERANS SERVICE

Troy Tornatta: Let’s, do you want to look at Veterans Services because I’ve got their budget as well.

President Abell: Okay, page 83.

Troy Tornatta: Mark Acker is here and he will answer any questions but I am doing this just to get a little plug in. Mark Acker has been selected, recommended by the governor and selected by the President of the United States to the Selective Services Board of Indiana, Board 43, and there are only five people on that board in this region. So we’d like to thank Mark for all his good work that he’s done and being selected to that group. I think its an outstanding accomplishment.

President Abell: It is.

Troy Tornatta: The only thing I’d throw out there, 3600, I don’t know why we’re paying ourselves rent. So unless Auditor Fluty has a reason behind that...I think that’s a waste of –

Bill Fluty: Its just an accounting issue to show the ins and outs and that we actually, that we do it for the County Engineer also, so its just the practice.

Troy Tornatta: Well, I wouldn’t put –

Bill Fluty: And it will show on the other side as a revenue, so it will be a wash.

Troy Tornatta: So I don’t – we deal on this board with cutting and not with revenues and as long as we do that, I wouldn’t put this in the budget, nor would I worry too much about it, but you deal with your Auditor on that. And I understand where you’re going with it. I know we don’t deal with this much on the revenue side and we have to cut that budget. So however you want to work that angle.

President Abell: We need to change the tape again.

Troy Tornatta: I think I’m done, right?

President Abell: I think you are.

Councilmember Leader: May I ask Mr. Acker a question?

President Abell: Do you want to wait until we put a new tape in?

Councilmember Leader: Pardon?

President Abell: You may, but we’re changing the tape.

TAPE CHANGED

Councilmember Leader: Good morning, Mark.

Mark Acker: Good morning. Madam President.

Councilmember Leader: I was just interested in how the rental of the coliseum is going in this recent year and what you foresee in the future as far as event rental. I know it’s available. Of course I’m there every Tuesday and we hope to be for a long, long time. But I just wondered how that is going.

Mark Acker: We kind of go through, as far as the board over there, they have, Sheila Ricketts is the rental manager and handles all the rentals. It’s kind of like we go through cycles. One quarter’s a good quarter. Low. Good. Low. As far as the booking, Hook-n–Shoot, of course the Rotary is there every Tuesday. Hook-n-Shoot comes in four times a year. We have several weddings and receptions, various events like that. It’s holding it’s own. I think right now it’s generated about $60,000 this year, that has went back into the building on maintenance and repairs and various items that had to be done in the building. And the commissioners were kindly, gave us some of the items out of the Jail that were old. Items that were taken out, we’re refurbishing and trying to put them back on line and usable in another county facility. Have looked at, just inundated with equipment coming out of the Jail and some from the Centre, and so we’re just kind of sorting through this stuff trying to see what’s usable, what’s salvageable and then put it on-line and utilize it. But for rentals, the building’s holding it’s own, and people are getting more attuned to it and that has been helpful to the general public’s knowledge about the Coliseum. And I have to say the Rotary has done a magnificent job of assisting us and getting the word out there to corporate level for events. And thank you for that.

President Abell: Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, last year I took kind of a tour through there, and I noticed there’s quite what I call vacant space. I mean there’s some, a lot of rooms that are being used for old storage, storage for old equipment and things like that that are surplussed stuff, stuff that probably really should be thrown away quite honestly. But it looks like there’s some office space around there, though, or some space that could be utilized for office space.

Mark Acker: We have two rooms. One, the Grand Army of the Republic is a museum area and the Spanish-American war room that’s on the opposite side of the building. That is dedicated to the Forty and Eight’s and to the organizations that utilize the building as per the language in the statute asks for veteran’s to have space for meetings and the organizational functions. The upstairs area, there are two large rooms upstairs and one middle room. None have heating or air conditioning in them; they are all gravity heat which would extend great amounts of money to try to air conditioning the front of those offices and you’d make them unviable to someone who would want them downtown. We talked about it, looked at it and it just was so financially outside of our realm of doing it that we just had to vacate that concept at this point.

Councilmember Shetler: As you’re facing the building, the room to the left there, I think it was used largely for a storage room.

Mark Acker: Down or up?

Councilmember Shetler: On the main floor.

Mark Acker: Main floor, that is now the Forty and Eight’s room, which is the, an offshoot of the American Legion. That stands for the Forty Men and Eight Horses and a Box Car during World War I. And they have a display in there that’s the Unknown Soldiers Tomb. If you stop back in and see it now, it’s entirely different and has been changed.

Councilmember Shetler: Good. I’m glad it’s being utilized for better purposes than storage.

Mark Acker: Yeah, it’s been better, better purposes.

Councilmember Shetler: Again, at that time, and it’s been, you know, several months, probably 12, 14 months ago. As you go back towards the stage, to the left of that stage, there, kind of a back room there again, where a lot, I’m going to call it junk, is just being stored and cluttered up and stuff. Is that room cleaned out and is that...?

Mark Acker: It’s a maintenance garage working area where we are constantly refurbishing the chairs that came from the Centre. Since their renovation, we got their chairs. There’s constant tables and chair renovation going on and maintenance that is done in that area. And it, and we do lack storage area. The building was not designed with a great deal of storage area, so it does limit where you can work on things and put things, your fork lift and your equipment and your drill presses and your machinery that has to be done, that garage is utilized for that. Sometimes it can get cluttered, I agree, but we’ve got a lot of county items moving in and out that’s either deemed un-repairable and not worth salvage or they are and then they’re worked on and brought on line in the building to be used somewhere.

Councilmember Shetler: One further question. Do we utilize, oh I guess, the half-way house, the safe house inmates for different projects and stuff over there?

Mark Acker: We are on with an agreement through and certified by the sheriff’s department to have community service people on the grounds daily to assist in cleaning, maintenance and, we’re not allowed weed-eaters or lawnmowers, but they can do other things in the building. Mop, clean, paint and use an occasional screwdriver. As long as they’re supervised.

Councilmember Shetler: How’s that integrated with, I guess, a private vendor that comes in and caters food and stuff like that?

Mark Acker: The catering service actually comes through the Coliseum. It uh...

Councilmember Shetler: How is that integrated with the safe house help and stuff?

Mark Acker: They, they actually then, we set the room, meaning the Veteran’s Council sets the room, all of the tables, chairs, needed items, all the warmers, all the things you see in that room belong to the Council. The only thing that does not belong to the Council is the sound system. And Mr. Hoskins is, I think that’s who you are addressing, various food items he brings in the building which he has an agreement with the Council through, to the Rotary to provide food. But we provide all the auxiliary labor to put the event on.

Councilmember Shetler: Okay. Thank you.

President Abell: We sort of jumped around here a little bit. Let me, just a minute. Would it be a problem with the Health Department if Mr. Tornatta just go ahead to at least finish or do you need to get back? You have an 11 o’clock appointment. Okay.

Troy Tornatta: I don’t know how long this...Thank you. Burdette. What else?

President Abell: Well, Burdette’s way down the, and they need to get back. Maybe we need to go ahead and let the Health Department do theirs.

Troy Tornatta: Okay.

HEALTH DEPARTMENT

President Abell: Page 147. And we’re going to take a break at 10:45 a.m., so you’ve got 15 minutes to do your show.

Sam Elder: Sam Elder, the Executive Director of the County Health Department. Just to start, if you first look at the budget, there’s a substantial increase, $358,964. But if you take into consideration that $150,000 of that has been added for the dental clinic. And $163,465 is in the salary account, counting fringes. Well, that doesn’t leave a whole lot of the others. I think the actual increase if you take the automobile which is $25,000 off which we’ve not had a new vehicle for some, I think 94. And we’ve had seven vehicles and when you don’t replace any of them for that long of time, you’re going to eventually not have any. And we would like to have a new vehicle. But the increase, the total increase, is under 3% if you take those items out, roughly. I round figures off. Gary doesn’t like that. But, I’d be glad to answer any questions about any of the increases and where any of the funds is utilized. Now, you have to understand where our fees are estimated next year for about half a million dollars.

President Abell: Questions anyone? Give us a minute to look at this.

Councilmember Raben: Well, I, since we’re on the dental clinic and I’m, guess I’m raising this question with Councilman Winnecke. We’ll expect that both hospitals will continue their commitment on the dental clinic?

Councilmember Winnecke: Yes. We’ve had some very preliminary discussions. We want to kind of get through the budget hearings to see what we were going to find. The monies that we’ve discussed before, the funding formula we’ve discussed before, is taking $80,000 in Riverboat money, as we have each of the last two years, and then taking $150,000 from the Health Department’s unappropriated balance and then asking the hospitals to split the difference between that, which will be considerably less than they’ve had, we’ve asked of them in each of the last two years. So 230, basically asking them to split a $70,000 shortfall.

Councilmember Shetler: Have you talked to anyone at the Welborn Foundation, about the possibility of getting involved there?

Councilmember Winnecke: Gary, do you want to talk about who you’ve spoken to?

Sam Elder: We’ve talked to the Welborn Foundation and they have told us that they have a policy. You know, first you have to apply for an application, you know, to get funding. And, they’ve said that they did not intend to fund any governmental agencies. Now, I know they’ve made one exception. They gave the school systems some money. I believe about a million dollars. But they’ve told us that they wouldn’t give us an application. You know, they were nice about it, but they said they weren’t giving applications to governmental agencies.

Councilmember Winnecke: The dental clinic advisory board which meets monthly, has, is in the process of forming a sort of a development committee if you will, to help identify potential funding sources that go beyond local government and beyond the hospitals. The First District Dental Society has agreed to help facilitate and identify potential funding sources. So, we’re, we’re really kind in the early stages of that.

Councilmember Shetler: I don’t know. I mean I don’t know if there’s any merit to reshaping the charter or whatever into more of a 501©)3, or something along those lines, where then they would be...

Councilmember Winnecke: One of the issues that we’re actually exploring, we’re exploring to see if they, if we can use the 501©)3 status of the First District Dental Society. If they would be the one, if they could be the organization that could apply for grants on behalf of the dental clinic, and we’re really just in the early stages of exploring that.

President Abell: Questions? Okay. Thank you, Mr. Elder.

BURDETTE PARK

President Abell: Mr. Tornatta, do you want to take the floor again?

Troy Tornatta: I guess we’ll do the Burdette budget. Steve’s going to come up here and do this. The one thing that came about today is, if you look on line item 4220, Office Machines.

President Abell: Wait a minute. You’re going down to do the Burdette next?

Troy Tornatta: Yeah, what do you, where are you?

President Abell: That’s okay. Well, we’ve got Convention Centre & Operating, but you need to leave, I understand. Okay, let’s do Burdette. 118.

Troy Tornatta: In fact after I’d, I’d just came across this. If Mr. Arvay comes up, and they’ve got a surplus computer situation that they’re pulling out. They’ve cleaned the computers up, and the fifteen inch monitors and it looks like they’re really nice computers.

President Abell: They’re from the courts, aren’t they?

Troy Tornatta: Exactly. I know he needs two, if not four, of those computers to start putting in positions to accept reservations. His computers that he has right now are starting to not work. I, they’re putting old, are they not? Six years old. So, if he could, if you could pull any of those computers from Mr. Arvay then I don’t think we’re going to have much an issue in that, so you can cut that $4,500 out.

President Abell: What line item is that?

Troy Tornatta: 4220, I believe.

President Abell: Okay.

Troy Tornatta: So, if you’d just keep that in mind when you’re looking to, to cut some budgets, might be able to pull out 4220 in that budget. And just an FYI, he’ll tell you more about it, we, I believe we have the first coat of asphalt on the bike path in the stint that we have, and so that’s done. And now we’re looking at some other opportunities. So, we’ve almost got one of those parts done.

President Abell: Okay.

Troy Tornatta: Okay, thank you very much.

President Abell: 118, Burdette Park.

Steve Craig: Good morning, Council.

President Abell: Good morning, Mr. Craig. Is there anything else anyone would want, would like to ask Mr. Craig? I think we’ve asked you several questions along the way.

Councilmember Goebel: I do have one question.

President Abell: Mr. Goebel.

Councilmember Goebel: With the recent raise of minimum way, how’s that impacted you?

Steve Craig: Well, we came back already and I transferred some money out of our reverting account to cover up-to-date what we needed. I didn’t ask for any money, I just transferred it. But in my budget, I have added $50,000 in my part-time account which is probably over half of my whole increase. But of that, will be needed to cover the minimum wage raise that’s going to apply to part-time, or not just to part-time, to all workers next year, in 2008.

Councilmember Leader: Is that in that Other Employee’s account?

Steve Craig: Yes, ma’am.

President Abell: Other questions?

Councilmember Raben: Yes. Steve, I see, like Gas and Oil is up, but I guess we’re making a move towards RTVs. We probably don’t need that increase in that.

Steve Craig: The things that I increased is the ones that I have to come back and get every year, you know, they do. If we go to that other RTV, I’m hoping it’ll start going back the other way, because it’s 70 miles to a gallon of gas and I replaced a 15 year old pick-up truck, you know. It goes from 10 miles to 70, so I think that would be a real positive thing for the park as far as the fuel goes. If I run short, it’s just one of those things where I have to come back. That’s the only things that I did raise, is ones where I’d run out and I’d have to come back.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. Other items, like just glancing through, Telephone. Is that a typo? This year was $3,080. Next year is $4,080.

Steve Craig: No, it’s not. We have talked to Matt Arvay and I do not carry a cell phone. The Commissioners had requested that I get a cell phone. That would be part of that. And there’s various raises that we’ve had. We just had a repair to our telephones down at our miniature golf that we had to pay for. But that is not a typo. We do want another $1,000 in that account.

Councilmember Raben: Okay.

Councilmember Winnecke: Steve, what’s the purpose, the explanation on the large increase in cleaning? Laundry and cleaning, I’m sorry?

Steve Craig: The laundry, we run out every year. That may be something we may be able to get by on, too. What we’re doing is the old laundry. The washing machine and the dryers that was in the old jail has actually been surplussed and we’re going to take them at Burdette, which will give us a bigger capacity to do our laundry out at the park. And, we run out every year from when the time my people come in the morning until they leave at night, the washers and dryers are running. That’s not only our chalets, but our concession stands. We furnish laundry for them and for our EMT and our swimming pool. All of the laundry is, that’s done, it’s taken out of that also.

President Abell: Any other questions?

Councilmember Leader: Just one. The increase in security, the $5,000 increase in security, what is that?

Steve Craig: Well, one thing, the Sheriff’s that work for me get paid what the Sheriff’s make. And, they’ve got a 3% raise every year and we have not been, raised our security in that sense. And I was also wanting to work somebody in the summertime from midnight until five, when my people come in, because we’ve had troubles with break-ins. And, we’ve just had another break-in for the first time this year, but we did have a break-in Saturday night.

Councilmember Leader: You don’t have anybody overnight, currently?

Steve Craig: No we don’t. The county Sheriff’s, they do patrol the park. They’re supposed to come through once an hour from midnight until six in the morning, but I have security, guess I shouldn’t really be telling this, but. All the time I have security at Burdette twenty-four hours a day.

President Abell: Yeah, probably not on television.

Steve Craig: And we have dogs in the pool area that we turn loose at night.

Councilmember Leader: Big dogs.

Steve Craig: Big Dogs.

President Abell: Any other questions that do not relate to the hours of operation at Burdette Park? Thank you, Steve.

Steve Craig: Thank you.

President Abell: We are going to take a break. When we come back, we will do the Centre, then the few that are left here, Mr. Winnecke is going to handle, because I have another appointment and I will be gone when we come back. Take a short break.

TAPE CHANGED

Councilmember Winnecke: Okay, we’ll continue. President Abell had an appointment that she had to get to so we’ll continue with Convention Center Operating Fund, page 196 in your hymnals.

CONVENTION CENTER OPERATING FUND

Darren Stearns: Hello, Darren Stearns, Assistant General Manager for SMG.

Councilmember Winnecke: Hi, Darren, how are you today?

Darren Stearns: Fine.

Councilmember Winnecke: I believe this is fairly straightforward, but if you would like to offer any explanation on this page feel free.

Darren Stearns: No, basically, we’re basing it on the...this is basically the utilities, I believe, is the one that we’re doing right now and it is based on the utilities. The more events we’re going to have, the more utilities that we will have.

Councilmember Winnecke: That’s a good thing.

Darren Stearns: Yes.

Councilmember Winnecke: Any questions of Darren on this fund? If not we’ll go to the Centre budget and that is on page 116.

THE CENTRE

Councilmember Winnecke: Actually this budget is about $40,000 less this year than last year.

Darren Stearns: Yeah.

Councilmember Winnecke: Questions of Darren or would you like to offer any explanation?

Darren Stearns: We’re basing it on the number of events that we have booked and are in the process of booking for the next year, so we’re looking pretty optimistic in what we have to do next year even with the...we will have the part-timers, their wages will probably go up a little bit with the minimum wage, but we’re looking pretty optimistic on what we’ve got going on next year.

Councilmember Raben: That brings up a good point, what is going on? I mean, what does the bookings and revenues look like for this year?

Darren Stearns: Well, for this year as of right now, Jimmy, correct me if I am wrong, but I think we’re $100,000 ahead of budget through the month of June.

Unidentified: One hundred sixty-five.

Darren Stearns: One hundred and sixty-five thousand through the month of June.

Councilmember Raben: Alright. Do you have any sort of report or can you supply us with something between now and the next two weeks on that information?

Darren Stearns: Sure, we have a monthly report that we send to the County Commissioners that we can probably get to you. Sure.

Councilmember Leader: And is that report by venue? Is it by–

Darren Stearns: Yeah, you would only --

Councilmember Leader: Would we be able to see each, the stadium, the Victory?

Darren Stearns: Well, the stadium, is the city’s building and they’re on a different one.

Councilmember Leader: Okay.

Darren Stearns: But, yeah, they are put together.

Councilmember Leader: We’ll be able to see the Victory?

Darren Stearns: Yeah, the Centre is by itself. The Victory is a city entity, too.

Councilmember Leader: Okay, thank you. So we’ll just see The Centre?

Darren Stearns: Yeah, you’ll just see The Centre.

Councilmember Winnecke: Anyone else? Okay, Darren, thank you.

Darren Stearns: Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Winnecke: Pretty easy, huh?

Darren Stearns: Yeah.

COUNTY HIGHWAY

Councilmember Winnecke: County Highway, 129. Good morning, Mike.

Mike Duckworth: Good morning.

Councilmember Winnecke: You have a brief overview that you would like to offer or would you just like to take questions?

Mike Duckworth: Just a couple of brief statements. I would like to first of all thank the Council for their indulgence over the last two years and eight months that I have been in this position. What I found when I arrived there was a department with much outdated and equipment that was substandard in my estimation. Since that time period, excuse me, we have not only updated our, with the Council and the Commission’s help, not only updated our equipment we’ve created and are continuing to create a safer environment for our employees as well as an increased awareness of updating our facility as well. The type of operation that we are, a 24 hour a day seven day a week potential operation that has to respond to many concerns of Vanderburgh County citizens as well as, we know, disaster and other storm type situations and we have to be ready at any point in time and that’s what we are building to continue, to be able to be responsive to those needs. So with that said, this budget in the three accounts, the Highway account, the Local Roads & Streets and the Cumulative Bridge account, as you well know, some of these accounts are shared or are in my account that Mr. Stoll oversees. So if you have questions it may be something that I can answer or something that we have to refer to John on.

Councilmember Winnecke: Okay, who would like to start?

Councilmember Leader: I would like to ask about the addition of the Laborer, 1069.

Mike Duckworth: Yes, ma’am. For the last three years I have put this request in and I know that the county has many requests for additional employees. My justification for this is the fact that we now, with the additions of all the subdivisions and roadways within those subdivisions that have been accepted by the county for general maintenance, everything from mowing to ditch concerns to concrete street repair, for paving, to patching, to tree work. We are in excess of, I believe, 560 miles of roadway that we have to maintain. When you look at the average age of our employee, insurance...not insurance, but vacation time is at about four weeks per year. In addition to that, through contractual agreement with Local 215, when we have call outs and our employees receive overtime, they can take that not only in pay, but in compensatory time as well. So having a full workforce is a challenge to coordinate. That and my request, not only for an additional Laborer in Highway, but in Bridge as well, is due to those concerns. I would tell you that our bridge crew, our maintenance of our bridges that are maintained by the crew only include seven people, and with illness and sickness and one of those positions currently...or two of those positions currently are out on sick leave, dwindles our capabilities to do those bridge approaches, the guard railing and so on and so forth.

Councilmember Winnecke: Mike, I noticed there were several sort of material line items that have significant increases. Could you offer us an explanation as to that?

Mike Duckworth: If you want to point out the particular ones I would be glad to respond to them.

Councilmember Winnecke: Like line 2530 on page 133, Bituminous Materials. Sand & Gravel on the same page. Calcium & Chloride. I believe in the other budgets some of those also are up pretty significantly.

Mike Duckworth: Yes. Bituminous Materials, account 2530 out of Highway. Last year we dealt with at the end of the year, and with Mr. Fluty’s assistance and trying to figure out how to utilize best practices and recognizing what our costs would be on a regular basis month-by-month, the former practice was that when there was an escalator charge that the paving companies would hold those charges till the end of the year. At the end of last year we had approximately $175,000 in escalator charges because of the fluctuation of oil prices. This year we have, through working with Debbie Spalding, we’ve made it a part of our agreement that they include those on a monthly basis, so that we realize what we’ve got month-to-month so we don’t overspend and so that we don’t over pave, so to speak, and end up with a deficit or taking it too close to the bone, so to speak. So, ironically, this year we’ve had very little escalator charges as opposed to last year. That’s just strictly the market. That really drives how much, how many lane miles that we can pave because, of course, the cost factors. In the last two years we have averaged right at 30 miles.

Because of taking and transferring some of last year’s escalator charges into this year’s budget that is why, I think, I can count three times I have come back to this Council for additional dollars other than transfers. That was one of them, I think you granted about $230,000 in more paving dollars so we could pave more county roads this year. That was the reason, was to cover the escalator charges and that is the justification I used in raising this line item to cover any of those charges that may be there. If those aren’t there, we are able to pave more.

Councilmember Winnecke: Okay.

Mike Duckworth: So I would leave that up to the Council as to if there is a happy medium there or whatever the case may be.

Councilmember Winnecke: Then what about the Calcium & Chloride? That wouldn’t fall into that.

Mike Duckworth: Calcium Chloride, the reason we raised that is, as you well know, something that has been very positive for our department as far as maintaining and anticipating snow events and ice and sleet and those kinds of things, is the fact that we’ve taken this into kind of a different level by pre-treating our roads. What that does is, I believe, it has saved us on overtime charges because it loosens the ice bonding to the roads. We have instruments on our supervisor’s trucks that tell us the pavement temperature so that we can gauge when we should pre-treat these roads. Going back to the cost, in pre-treating it takes extra costs of those chemicals and the equipment used to apply the materials, so that’s the emphasis.

Councilmember Winnecke: Have you been able to quantify the cost savings on the overtime?

Mike Duckworth: I would tell you that our overtime, and of course, that depends upon...overtime not only reaches into snow events, but storms and those kinds of things. I would say that we’re down about $20,000 in what we’ve used this year in overtime. I think some of that, I can’t attribute all of that, but I would say some of that has to do with the fact that during regular hours we are pre-treating and that, I think, enables us to, when there is a snow and we get one or two inches, to get it off quicker and it’s not binding. The blades seem to work better, and when we just have those minute events it is dissipating so we don’t have to go out.

Councilmember Winnecke: Okay.

Mike Duckworth: So I think it has had some effect.

Councilmember Winnecke: Other questions?

Councilmember Goebel: In that regard, do you have some of that stockpiled at this point in time because it was a light winter?

Mike Duckworth: Yes, we do. We have right at about 1,000 tons of salt at this time and we have, I believe, an ample supply of our chemicals and of course, we make the brine which we use up to a certain temperature. We make that out of the salt, so I think we’re in very good shape to start the season.

Councilmember Raben: Would you like to explain the computer request?

Mike Duckworth: Yes, as you know with the previous philosophy of the Commissioners Office, we went into a situation where we applied advance vehicle locator systems on some of our equipment. We have approximately, I believe there is a little over 20 total pieces of equipment that we have that capability. The hard wiring and the getting that program set up was costly and it is costly to maintain. I would tell you that there is new technology available that would enhance what we’re doing and enable us to maybe get a better feel. As you know with technology, and I know Matt Arvey and others have told you, that you get a computer and every three or four years it is obsolete or the program is outdated or there is a better functionary piece of equipment out there. We have this available now that we are watching, that we are monitoring. It has come in extremely handy when we’ve had reports of our vehicles being in places where they weren’t supposed to. It enables me to go back and check on that. It enables me if there would be an emergency of some type to immediately locate equipment if we could not do it by radio. I will tell you that our radio and cell telephone systems are great, but at times in the middle of the night or whatever the case may be, they are not as reliable as they probably should be. We are working on that. But I would say that the request here is really twofold. It is not only for the continual upkeep and expansion of the AVO program, but it is also for renovations of our computer system within our offices as well as the licensing requirements that come along with those programs. That is the majority of those increased costs and as you’ve heard several times today from Commissioner Tornatta, this was ideology and this was a request that was made previously that we have tried to carry out in the best and most efficient way that we can.

Councilmember Winnecke: I’m sorry, Tom, go ahead.

Commissioner Shetler: Yeah, how many radio pagers do you have out?

Mike Duckworth: Radio?

Commissioner Shetler: Well, in that Radio/Pagers line item, that $8,000. How many radio pagers do you have?

Mike Duckworth: Well, we have a radio in each of our–

Commissioner Shetler: Is that 20 vehicles?

Mike Duckworth: Well, there is more than that because we have radios in our mowers. We have radios in our gradalls, we have radios, you know, in every major piece of equipment.

Commissioner Shetler: Let me rephrase the question. Do you have any portable pagers or cell phones that are given out to the employees?

Mike Duckworth: Yes, we, the four supervisors have a cell phone. They also have portable radios because they work in and out of the vehicles. There is a pool of six walkie talkies that we use from the paver to the flagman and those kinds of things as well as we have one cell phone that is used for our second shift employees in case they have to be dispatched out to put out barricades or whatever the case may be.

Commissioner Shetler: Here is where I am going with that. We’ve just at our company inquired about adding the capability to the cell phones for our drivers, GPS capability. It’s about $25 to $30 per unit which in your case you would be talking, and that’s per month, roughly $600, you know, a month. If you are talking about 20 different vehicles that have the GPS on there, that would be $7,200 and I don’t know how much of that 55 is actually allocated for that, but it sounds to me like that would be a whole lot less expensive and a lot more adaptable because it is portable, and you could also utilize it for communicating with them, you know, on other needs. Now, we have ours blocked so that they can’t make personal calls and stuff and use them as a walkie talkie type thing as opposed to using them strictly as cell phones, but it might be an avenue that you might want to investigate as opposed as trying to continue to use the GPS as we have known it in the past.

Mike Duckworth: Right, and that is the new technology that I am talking about. Our network specialist is right on top of that. That is part of this request. I think we figured as a part of that and what we do then is move some of the hard wired equipment to the less usable equipment. You know, we would put that in our mowers and that’s a concern of ours because our mowers are way out in the county many times and if they would happen to flip or whatever the case may be, we would need someone to identify where they are at and that’s a way we could do that as well. But you’re right. There is new technology that is less expensive that is probably going to generate better and streamline the information to us quicker, I think.

Commissioner Shetler: The GPS, there is a 45 minute or hour delay or better on–

Mike Duckworth: What we have now, there is about a 30 minute delay.

Commissioner Shetler: Thirty minutes, okay.

Mike Duckworth: And from what I understand with the cell phone operations, it’s within...it’s almost real time.

Commissioner Shetler: Correct.

Mike Duckworth: It is within a few minutes.

Commissioner Shetler: Alright, thank you.

Councilmember Winnecke: Mike, my last two questions have to do with the top of page 139 in the Cum Bridge budget. Both Motor Vehicles and Miscellaneous Equipment, what vehicles are anticipated for purchase next year and then what is Miscellaneous Equipment?

Mike Duckworth: Give me just a second.

Councilmember Winnecke: Sure.

Mike Duckworth: I know, just right off the bat, one of the pieces of equipment in Miscellaneous Equipment has to do with a camera system that we would use in our culvert work. Many of our underground culverts, we know that there is a break because we’ve got a blockage and we’ve got water standing everywhere. This equipment could travel through the pipe and tell us where the break is instead of us digging up the entire street. We could go to a certain area and we feel like that would enable us to be more efficient.

Councilmember Winnecke: What was the cost approximately of that system?

Mike Duckworth: That, I believe, is right at $40,000. The other has to do with the replacement of trucks that we use. One of those is a foreman’s vehicle that has in excess of 130,000 miles on it, I believe. The other is a lift truck for our trash vehicle. We are getting a lot of runs now where we have couches and old carpets and things that are wet and so we want to apply a lift to an existing truck and that is several thousand dollars to do that as well.

Councilmember Winnecke: So that would be under the Motor Vehicle line?

Mike Duckworth: Yes.

Councilmember Winnecke: What would be the approximate cost of those two, do you know?

Mike Duckworth: I know there are some more in there and for some reason I’m not pulling it up this morning. It would be, I think it was $12,000 for the lift. Basically it’s a tommy lift that attaches to the truck and then the pick up truck was $24,000, I believe, was the estimate on that.

Councilmember Winnecke: If you could in the next–

Mike Duckworth: I could itemize those and get those.

Councilmember Winnecke: We would like to know what, you know–

Mike Duckworth: Because I have a five year plan and for some reason I didn’t bring that with me this morning, but there is a plan in regards to the vehicle replacements that we have and I will get that to the Council as well.

Councilmember Winnecke: That would be great. If you could just email it to each of us that would be great.

Mike Duckworth: No problem.

Councilmember Winnecke: Any other questions for Mike? Thank you, Mike.

Mike Duckworth: Thank you.

Councilmember Winnecke: Thank you, John.

LOCAL ROADS AND STREETS

Councilmember Winnecke: Oh, I’m sorry. Local Roads & Streets 155. I guess the first question I had, actually two quick questions here. Three, pardon me. Legal Services, Equipment Lease and Other Contractual each are really large increases.

John Stoll: The Legal Services and Other Contractual are accounts from my office. The other one is from Mike’s. But Legal Services, I just bumped that up for next year on the basis of the spending that we’ve seen so far for this year. The biggest problem we have in that is never knowing what might come up to where we have to refer to the county attorney. We’ve had some issues that just randomly come up, whether it’s encroachments in the right-of-way, the agreements have to be worked out. Or like yesterday, even though it was a bridge issue, there is a resident who was asking about the vacation of a bridge that was done 17 years ago that has to be researched. It’s those kinds of things that we just don’t know when they’ll come up and we don’t have a specific project to charge those legal hours off on. If it was specific to Cross Pointe Boulevard or Green River Road we would charge it to the project account, but these are for questions that don’t have a project account associated with it.

Councilmember Winnecke: Okay.

John Stoll: Then the Other Contractual, I requested an increase of $250,000 simply to cover additional contractual street repairs. That was on the basis of we had a substantial amount of carry over from the estimated ‘07 list that is already carrying into ‘08 even without getting any input from residents in ‘08. If it wasn’t approved, then some of those ‘08 requests will roll into 09 and so that is why it was bumped up.

Councilmember Winnecke: Okay.

John Stoll: The other one I think Mike would have to address.

Mike Duckworth: As I said when I was here for the transfer the last time, that Lease & Equipment account we are needing less and less in that account because of the updates in our equipment that we are purchasing. At one time I believe that line item was up to, I think, $60,000. Now, and because of breakdowns and those kinds of situations, it was used quite a bit. Now that we have updated our equipment, I would feel comfortable with probably half as much.

Councilmember Winnecke: So $30,000?

Mike Duckworth: Yes.

Councilmember Winnecke: Because each of the last three years we’ve budgeted zero. It’s on page 155.

Mike Duckworth: I believe that there are two Lease & Rental accounts. There is one in Highway, I believe, and there is one in Roads & Streets. I would tell you that the other account in Highway would be enough for us to maintain what we need.

Councilmember Winnecke: That’s at $12,000.

Mike Duckworth: I think that...if I would need more for some special circumstance I would just come back, but I think that is adequate.

Councilmember Winnecke: So you’re saying now that this could be zero?

Mike Duckworth: Yes.

Councilmember Winnecke: Okay, thank you.

Commissioner Shetler: Does it make a difference where that revenue stream comes from between those two? I mean, is this–

Councilmember Winnecke: Bill?

Bill Fluty: I guess it does make a difference depending if County Highway’s revenues were short and actually if revenues were better in Local Roads & Streets.

Commissioner Shetler: My question is both of these accounts are both supplied by county tax dollars regardless?

Bill Fluty: Not by property taxes if that is what you’re saying.

Commissioner Shetler: Right.

Bill Fluty: No, they are both separate funds.

Councilmember Raben: Wheel and Excise, I believe.

Bill Fluty: Gasoline.

Councilmember Raben: Gas taxes.

Commissioner Shetler: Right, so would we be better off putting it in there and keeping it off the property side is, I guess, what I am saying?

Councilmember Winnecke: Neither one–

Mike Duckworth: Either one is the same, Tom, I believe.

Councilmember Winnecke: Neither one of them are funded by property tax.

Commissioner Shetler: Oh, both of them are.

Mike Duckworth: Right.

Commissioner Shetler: Okay, thanks.

Mike Duckworth: My point is, as I said to you when I came in for the transfer, we’re using less and less there.

Councilmember Winnecke: Right.

Mike Duckworth: And that would be fine.

Bill Fluty: Of the two, it should probably be in Local Roads & Streets.

Mike Duckworth: So you can cut that from $60,000 to $12,000 and then zero out the $12,000 in the other.

Councilmember Winnecke: Other questions of Mike?

Councilmember Goebel: A quick question for John. In light of the recent disaster are we...are you responsible now to check again all the bridges locally and have you been mandated to do that and do you see any problems?

John Stoll: We just had the inspection done for Vanderburgh County late last year. I believe it was in December is when they were all finalized again. Our draft inspection report was submitted to INDOT and it has not been approved as of yet, but the draft copy I got did not show any major problems. It had the recommendations for replacement of a couple of structures. One of them is the Broadway bridge that is requested in next year’s budget, but there are no major problems identified in that. As far as any mandates to reinspect, the state did mandate reinspection of bridges of a similar type to the one up in Minnesota, one of which is the Franklin Street bridge. They were out there based on what the media informed me, but as far as seeing any reports, I have not seen any reports from those inspectors. I don’t even know who the inspectors were. I am assuming they were INDOT employees, but we weren’t contacted, so I am not sure. I am expecting we will see a report eventually, but given the fact that it was just inspected last December I don’t anticipate any major problems.

Councilmember Goebel: Thank you.

Councilmember Winnecke: Tom?

Commissioner Shetler: Yeah, I had some questions that I guess deal with some of the mechanics. Do we have mechanics on board?

Mike Duckworth: Yes, we have five mechanics.

Commissioner Shetler: And are they in diesel or both, gasoline and diesel?

Mike Duckworth: Both.

Commissioner Shetler: And heavy equipment as well?

Mike Duckworth: Yes.

Commissioner Shetler: Let’s see, this year I think you are asking for Truck Repair $50,000 and then I thought I saw something else in there.

Mike Duckworth: Yeah, a part of that–

Commissioner Shetler: Again, with the philosophy of the newer equipment, I would think that would still hold true for...that perhaps repair bills would be getting less as well.

Mike Duckworth: Well, here is the problem is that the fact that some of these makes and models are worked on by the vendors much more efficiently and with much more expertise. For instance, the new $240,000 gradall. Part of that vehicle, certain parts of it are still under warranty and some of it is not and we don’t...one of the requests that I had was for this mechanic’s bay so we could lift equipment up and do some of that work. We do not have a facility conducive to do that. We don’t have a lift and so some of this very heavy equipment that has to be repaired it’s just safer and it’s more efficient to send back to the actual vendor that does that work on a regular basis rather than having our mechanics that aren’t as skilled or, you know, trained in that particular piece of equipment. Our guys do general maintenance, the oil checks, the, you know, repairing of general engine repairs and those kind of things. Even the small equipment that we have out there, so we keep them busy with those things as well and on some of the major stuff we do contract out.

Commissioner Shetler: So the fact that they are newer pieces of equipment, going back to your point earlier, that we don’t need as much leasing because we have the equipment and we have newer stuff, would that also mean that we probably don’t need to go outside to get work done because we’re not having the breakdowns, I would hope.

Mike Duckworth: I see your rationale on that, I would leave a little bit of leeway in there because you just don’t know what is going to happen. I still have several pieces of equipment that are older. Mowers, because of the use that we put on them in the right-of-way mowing that we do have a tendency to break down quite a bit.

Commissioner Shetler: But that stuff you would do in house, I would assume.

Mike Duckworth: Yeah, we would do it in house, but you know, of course, I would say, yeah, that could be trimmed back a little bit, but I would like a little bit of a cushion there in case something major would happen with a bigger piece of equipment.

Commissioner Shetler: Alright, thanks, Mike.

Councilmember Winnecke: Other questions? Thank you gentlemen. Oh, John?

John Stoll: I was going to say one other thing on University Parkway. I just wanted to clarify that the $600,000 requested for next year, I plan to follow that up with another $600,000 request in 09 which would make up the local match for the construction of the segment between Marx & New Harmony. I just wanted to clarify that this isn’t for the Upper Mount Vernon to Marx segment. That should be covered through other funds. This won’t cover a local match in 08. It’s anticipated to be combined with some more funds in 09 for a local match in 09.

Councilmember Winnecke: Okay. Thanks, John.

John Stoll: Thanks.

Councilmember Winnecke: Thanks, Mike.

LEGAL AID

Councilmember Winnecke: Legal Aid 122.

Scott Wylie: Good morning everybody. I’m Scott Wylie. I am treasurer of our local Legal Aid Society and I am here with...we have two budgets before you today for presentation. In your materials, our general city/county budget as well as our United Way budget. I am pleased to let you know that our board has raised sufficient private funds to remain eligible for United Way funding for the 2008 period. It’s something we have worked very hard at since that United Way money allows us to, of course, over the years receive hundreds of thousands of dollars that we did not have to come to the taxpayers for and so we are pleased that we’ve remained that private fund raising that Councilmember Raben was talking about earlier with the parks and some of the other areas. Those of us that work in charitable activities have a little bit better ability to do that. So we’re pleased to let you know that we will be eligible for United Way funding with the efforts that we’ve done this year. I’m happy to answer questions. I have Susie Hartig, who is our Executive Director and Karen Heard, who is our Vice President who are here as well today.

Councilmember Winnecke: I’ll start. I would go right to the United Way budget because this is the one issue that we’ve been visiting and revisiting I think as long as I have been on the Council. I have supported this and continue to support it, but I am out there over my ski tips on it alone, fairly much alone. But someone did during the city/county budget hearing, and it might have been Councilmember Curt John from City Council, he had a good suggestion and that is that maybe it’s time that we asked the county’s consultant on job study to reexamine this position and look at maybe not just that position, but all the positions in the United Way office and then come back with a recommendation versus your board taking your valuable time to come before us.

Scott Wylie: Yeah, and for those of you who were involved with that, our last, when we came back to seek the funding this year, we were directed to go to the city to get their approval first. We did go to the City Clerk and our liaison in the city who could not figure a way to put it on their agenda. So I went and wrote to the City Controller who could not find a way to do it and eventually it ended up with the City Attorney’s office. The City Attorney’s office indicated because they were not the fiscal manager and it did not involve any governmental funding at all, that the city did not have jurisdiction and would not take that up, and then they communicated to your counsel, Mr. Ahlers, and to your chair that information. That is where we are right now. We have not been able to get back on to the county’s agenda since that just occurred last month. We have done, by the way, with Work One, an analysis of all six of our positions in the office, for specifically, for transition planning since Ms. Hartig will not be our Executive Director for the rest of eternity. We are the only department left in any of our public safety and legal departments where the Executive Director or Chief Officer, their salary is not differentiated at all from the staff in the office. It would be like being the Prosecutor or being the City Attorney and being paid exactly the same as the entry level attorney in the office. So anything that...we do have that analysis. It’s very substantial. Approximately 100 pages for each of our folks. Detailed analysis showing the difference in the administrative responsibilities if that would be any way to assist in cost savings. That has been done and that was done free of charge for the Legal Aid Society through a grant. Again, another opportunity to receive that through private funding instead of coming back to you. The budgets you see in front of you are virtually identical to last year. We’re not asking for any substantial increase in any of the line items that you see more than $500 or $600.

Councilmember Winnecke: If you could, one thing, if you could forward that report to our Executive Assistant, Ms. Deig, and to Mr. Deischer?.

Scott Wylie: We would be happy to.

Councilmember Winnecke: And then, Tim, if you could go ahead and start the process of evaluating those like we would any other office and then to me that is the next logical step.

Scott Wylie: Yeah, whatever process. What, of course, our fear is, is, of course, if Ms. Hartig decided to no longer be our Executive Director, she could cease doing that today and would be paid exactly the same to be a staff attorney which is the...and if we were to give our staff attorneys, either of them presently, our Executive Director’s job their salary would not alter. Because of that fact, we are worried that, as we go through with transition planning, that trying to attract anyone into the Executive Director position with no remuneration for those additional tasks beyond...they also act as a staff attorney for us as well, that we would not be able to do so.

Councilmember Raben: Can I comment on that? I don’t think you’re totally accurate. I think, correct me if I am wrong, but I think there is about a $4,500 or $4,600 difference.

Scott Wylie: That’s only because of seniority within the county system. We follow the same step system that the county follows in everything. It is based completely on seniority. There is not differentiation. If Kevin was a couple years further along he would be making exactly the same as Susie.

Councilmember Raben: Well, we have that throughout this building. I mean, you can have a person working in the County Assessor’s office that has been here 35 years and that salary can be as much as the County Assessor that was elected last year.

Scott Wylie: Oh, absolutely. We’re not questioning that at all, Councilmember. You know, we know if we hired someone for example with no county time, then their salary would be tens of thousands of dollars less than what Mr. Gibson’s salary presently is. However, if there was another attorney with the same seniority in the office doing staff attorney work, they would be paid exactly the same as the Executive Director with no differentiation and if we were to promote any of our existing staff attorneys they would receive no remuneration for the Executive Director administration activities. That’s what it is. It’s not that we have any difficulties with the step salary. That is going to occur with the seniority system that you at the city and county set up based on seniority. What we’re talking about is the differentiation for the Executive Director’s administrative activities as the chief executive officer for the office.

Councilmember Raben: Which still represents about a $4,500 or $4,600 difference and, again, we can’t put the cart before the horse. We shouldn’t look at what happens ten years from now. As it currently is today, right or wrong, there is a substantial difference.

Scott Wylie: Yes, and that difference is based on the fact that Ms. Hartig has been an employee of your offices longer than the other staff attorneys in our office. In fact, the lowest paid staff attorney in the office has only been in the office for, I think, six or seven years. If we were to hire him to be the Executive Director of the Legal Aid Society he would be paid exactly what he is paid right now. There is nothing that allows for any remuneration for the administration tasks for the Executive Director. I’m not saying that in any way Susie doesn’t make more money than some of our existing employees, but that is based on seniority not on her tasks.

Councilmember Winnecke: Mike?

Councilmember Goebel: Well, this is I guess just a question about the workload. Susie, do you have, because you’re the Executive Director, less caseload than the other attorneys in your office or do you have the same amount?

Scott Wylie: I can say in the analysis that Work One did, Susie has approximately 62 specific tasks and our average staff attorneys run in the low 30s in terms of the analysis of the work that a lawyer performs because most of the lawyers perform no administrative duties within the office. We do have her not only as a full staff attorney, but also doing the administrative functions.

Sue Hartig: I have tried over the last several years to get my caseload reduced because it has always been the same as the other attorneys and it is slightly reduced, but not as much as it should be to make up for all the other administrative functions.

Councilmember Goebel: Thank you.

Scott Wylie: I would be happy...we can forward those materials on to you. Those have already been done. They did a very nice job for us. They also did all of our secretarial positions as well which will allow us, when we need to hire any new secretaries, to be able to do that with testing through Work One for free.

Councilmember Raben: Back to the United Way side, this $69,000 is $5,000 more than what United Way contributed last year?

Scott Wylie: No, it is exactly what United Way contributed for 2007, the present year, although we have not been able to get the authority to spend that extra $5,000 they gave from $64,000 to $69,000 because going to the city and being unable to complete that process there, we have not yet been back to you at the county level.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, so 2008, they’re going to fund it at $69,000?

Scott Wylie: At 2008, this is budgeted with no increase in United Way keeping it completely consistent and over our United Way spending we have always been kept at the same level or in the case this last year they actually raised our allocation $5,000 specifically to assist us at your direction to move this request from county and city monies to privately raised dollars that we raised on our own.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, so this has nothing to do with any unappropriated balances or anything at all?

Scott Wylie: No.

Councilmember Raben: So next year, or 2008, it should be $69,000 and in 2009 it will be $69,000.

Scott Wylie: In terms of we can never guarantee, just like we can’t guarantee what you will give us each and every year, all we can do is budget and, of course, as we have indicated in terms of all of our coming forward with this, it is in the United Way budget specifically because we have promised to you that we will not take any funds from the city and (inaudible) at your direction.

Councilmember Winnecke: The 2007 level was predicated on the 2006/2007 United Way campaign, so if next year or if this year’s campaign goes down the allocations are made each spring. Theoretically, in ‘08, allocations to every agency could theoretically go down. All the United Way pledge is strictly predicated on the success of the overall campaign.

Scott Wylie: Which is why we are unable to come to you with the firm number and guarantee it until March which was the reason why we had to come back instead of doing it in August and September of last year. As Councilmember Winnecke indicated, the reason we weren’t able to come back was specifically because United Way is not able to formally contractually allocate that money until March when they complete their campaign and their allocations.

Councilmember Winnecke: We’re going to change the tape real quickly here.

TAPE CHANGED

Councilmember Winnecke: Mike?

Councilmember Goebel: Well, this is obviously a sticky issue, and I think this group is very firm that we don’t want any more tax dollars coming out, but the United Way is providing. But we won’t know until March or April of next year if the allocation will be the same. Is there a way that, if the money is funded, let’s say 07, the additional five, that we will wait to apply it until 08?

Scott Wylie: And we have indicated both in our 2007 request and in this request that this fund would only be provided if it is received from the United Way after the allocation. Meaning it would not be actually spent until it is received, and if it is not received, it will not be spent.

Councilmember Goebel: But we, we still have to have the budget for next year in place.

Scott Wylie: Yeah, and that, that is, that is why we have invited you to put that restriction on the budget allocation in each of these years.

Councilmember Winnecke: And, if I may, just because we do need to move on here, I think one of the issues is what should this position be funded at overall? I mean, and whether it’s tax dollars or United Way dollars, is really secondary, in my opinion, to how, not just Susie’s position, but each of, each of them in there. Are they, is the pay commensurate for the work they do relative to the other like positions in local government? So, I think if Tim can start that process of that evaluation, and bring that to job study, I think that’s, to me, the next logical place to go.

Scott Wylie: Yep, and we’d be happy to forward that material and the other support material we have on it.

Councilmember Winnecke: Tom?

Councilmember Shetler: I hate belabor the point here, but being a relatively new councilman going through this the first time, I do have a couple of questions. One, you mentioned that you have other sources of income or revenue sources. About how much money comes in from those sources?

Scott Wylie: We, we privately raise, in order to be eligible for United Way funding, you have to maintain a certain level of reserve funds all of which we have done through private fund raising. We’ve asked for no money from the city or county ever for those funds. And those primarily come from local attorneys, the bar association. We do things like silent auctions at the annual Law Day dinners. We get some funds as you get, you get the report each and every year, the audit, some funds from IOTA funding, which is interest in one of your trust accounts that funds indigent legal services throughout the State of Indiana. But most of our funding comes from small sources like that.

Councilmember Shetler: And about how much is that?

Scott Wylie: Per year, I would imagine, we probably raise maybe, what twenty or twenty-five thousand a year, if we do real well. And the United Way continues to ask us to have a larger amount of money. But of course we have somewhat of a difficulty raising it, in that a lot private individuals who might give to charity do not feel the need to give to an organization like ours because they don’t like the, feel like they want to give charity to the government.

Councilmember Shetler: Is this department or agency, is it required by statute for the county to maintain or?

Scott Wylie: No, we’re a joint powers authority between the city and county. The Legal Aid Society has been here in Evansville now, we’re approaching our fiftieth year. And like many large mid-western, urban areas like Evansville, Legal Aid Societies were created in that period from the mid-fifties to the late sixties. And we’ve been a joint operating authority of the city and county now for nineteen or twenty years. 1973.

Councilmember Shetler: Do you have any idea of the ninety-two counties in Indiana, how many of those counties are maintaining the Legal Aid Society?

Scott Wylie: Well, you’re going to find that in most of the urban areas, you’ll have a variety of legal service agencies funded by a variety of mechanisms including city and county government, interest and lawyer trust account funds, which is the next largest area. Legal Aid Society’s funded by the Legal Services Corporation, which is the federal funding arm that does it. If you go to Indianapolis you may find as many as fifteen or twenty different agencies that are part of the patchwork providing legal services for the poor. Here in Evansville, in Vanderburgh County, we only have three. And that is Indiana Legal Services, which maintains a small office for our district, the volunteer lawyer program, where I’m a plan administrator that coordinates our pro-bono work, and then the Legal Aid Society of Evansville, which does the predominant amount of work for residents who are indigent in Vanderburgh County.

Councilmember Shetler: Alright. Thank you.

Councilmember Winnecke: Any other questions? Thank you.

Scott Wylie: We appreciate your time and really appreciate all of your considerations.

911

Councilmember Winnecke: Okay. Emergency 911 Service Fund, 190. This is pretty straightforward. This is our 30% share of Central Dispatch. There is a $100,000 request for reverse 911. I don’t know if that’s a project the Commissioner’s still support or not. Okay. With no other questions, we will stand in recess until tomorrow morning. Thank you.

(Meeting recessed at 11:50 a.m.)

VANDERBURGH COUNTY COUNCIL

BUDGET HEARINGS

AUGUST 16, 2007

The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 16^th day of August, 2007 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 9:03 a.m. by County Council President Marsha Abell.

President Abell: We’d like to call back into session the 2008 Vanderburgh County Council’s budget review. Mr. Winnecke would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

(Pledge of Allegiance was given)

President Abell: Welcome to everyone. This is our third and final day of budget review. I would like to ask those who are going to approach the council this morning to please keep it as brief as possible. We have a tight schedule. We have some other things we have to do later today. We want to get out of here as soon as possible. Please just address your budget requests, increases, and answer our questions. Anything further, you can give to us in writing and we will take it with us. I have some changes. There are two people that need to go first this morning. The County Surveyor has requested, he has to go out on-site and needs to get out of here. And after him, is Marilee Fowler here? I haven’t seen Marilee. Marilee has to catch an airplane, so we will do those two first and then we will go back on schedule. Mr Jeffers, good morning.

SURVEYOR

Bill Jeffers: Good morning, President Abell, and other members of Council. Thank you for taking me first. Commissioner Nix is waiting for me to go out in the field with him on a citizen complaint at nine thirty. The Surveyor’s budget is submitted exactly the same as last year with the exception of a five-year step-increase for the Party Chief. A twenty-year step-increase for the Chief Draftsman. And then the anticipated three percent raises and FICA, etc. All other line items under General Fund Surveyor are exactly the same as last year.

President Abell: I didn’t tell everyone, that’s on Page 35.

Bill Jeffers: If there are any questions, I’m here to answer those.

President Abell: I have one little question. What’s a Party Chief do? I think maybe we need one of those.

Bill Jeffers: I would love to get together with the job study group and consultant and change a lot of these names to something more, more twenty-first century, but that’s the fellow who, or the person who leads the survey party in the crew. He’s the chief of the survey party. That’s a traditional name. We don’t have the chain-gang, but we still have a chain man, but he’s the guy that takes care of the measuring equipment. It used to be called the chain, measuring chain, now it’s, now we do it electronically. Those could be updated.

President Abell: Yeah, I think. Any questions? Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: Just a brief comment. Thanks for holding the line.

President Abell: Yes.

Bill Jeffers: Yes, sir. And as you’ll notice, I, we anticipate turning some in at the end of the year. We don’t need to go into detail, but we’re getting a new vehicle out. For example, we’re getting a new vehicle out of the Perpetuation Fund, which is not General Funds, so you can anticipate money being returned hopefully from tires, tubes, mechanical repairs, etc., as we have in the past. Page 36; that’s the same thing isn’t it? Okay.

SURVEYOR CORNER PERPETUATION

President Abell: You want to go to your Perpetuation? It’s 184.

Bill Jeffers: 184. Corner Perpetuation Fund is the money that’s collected $5.00 per deed transfer in the County Recorder’s office. My statute goes to the Corner Perpetuation Fund because all deeds are tied to section corners in the county and the County Surveyor’s responsible to maintain those section corners in their proper place. And so that fund pays for that, those particular duties. Again, everything here is pretty much the same as last year. You may pick out something that’s not, like I said, we’re buying a new vehicle out of this fund, because it’s used...

President Abell: Now, where is that? I didn’t see that?

Bill Jeffers: I think that’s already been approved by Council, so I don’t guess it shows up here.

Councilmember Winnecke: We did that last month.

President Abell: Okay. So, that’s why it’s not in your 2008. So, you’re going to buy that in 2007?

Bill Jeffers: Yes, ma’am. And I’ve been told by the chief deputy who prepared this particular budget, that everything here is the same, as well.

President Abell: What are you going to buy with your $6,000 in Computer Hardware?

Bill Jeffers: We asked for that, because we are updating our computers, but we don’t buy them until we absolutely need them. So, that’s just been standing in there for three years.

President Abell: You do that through Matt Arvay?

Bill Jeffers: It just keeps coming forward every, every year. We have spent some money out of there, but we don’t buy them unless we absolutely need them. There’s still things in the basement that we can cabbage.

President Abell: You, you work through Mr. Arvay for that?

Bill Jeffers: Oh yeah. Absolutely.

President Abell: Okay.

Bill Jeffers: Yeah, we have to submit our requests through Mr. Arvay and he approves all the requests as we need them.

President Abell: Okay. Any questions? Thank you, Mr. Jeffers.

Bill Jeffers: And the map on the, that’s in here too I suppose on some page. Basically, we used to sell a lot of hard copy maps and we would collect $5.00 a map or whatever, whatever we thought it was worth and we have different prices for different size and different details of map. We still sell some of those, but not so much anymore, because most of our stuff is on-line, and so that fund is skeletal. And we just buy blue print paper and mapping supplies out of that as we’re able to sell things.

President Abell: Okay.

Bill Jeffers: All of our money is handled through the County Treasurer and the County Auditor. We don’t touch the money. We send people down there for a quietus, but again, we don’t sell very many maps any longer.

President Abell: Any questions? Mr. Sutton?

Councilmember Sutton: Yes. Mr. Jeffers, by chance is there a way that you get a indication of how many hits you actually are getting on the site where they are tracking, if there’s a tracking mechanism on how many maps are actually downloaded or printed off your site?

Bill Jeffers: Mr. Arvay, his system, we’re tied into GIS, all of our web sites, all of our web pages on our site are tied through him, and he shows how many hits we get per day, and per year, or per month. He has a tracking mechanism that shows that, but I’m not sure exactly how many hits we get specifically drawing down maps. Tomorrow there’s a company coming in who is going to scan all of our section corner records, all of our old survey record books. Everything we have, either on-line or in hard copy, and put that on-line, as well. So, surveyors will not have to visit our office to run hard copies on our print machine. They can down, they’ll be able to download that when that’s put on-line.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, just inquiring whether or not any thought has been given to some way in which you guys can, what you were, what you’re missing out on, I guess, what you’ve been receiving, if there’s a way to put some way, put some feature on there where you can actually charge for maps that are downloaded from your site?

Bill Jeffers: Right. There is a way. And other county surveyors in this state have done it and do charge for what’s being downloaded digitally from their mapping or section corner records. I’ve resisted that, because I figure we’re already being paid by the tax payers there, I mean it’s, a philosophical argument. We don’t charge any permit fees. We don’t charge for anything but copies, hard copies. And, however, with the guidance of council if we should take a different approach, I’d be happy to explore it.

Councilmember Sutton: I’d say it’s at least worth taking a look just at how much activity initially, I mean obviously, very few people are using it, downloading maps, it would seem to not make a whole lot of sense. The costs would probably outweigh any potential benefit that you’d get out of it. But, if it is rather heavily used, I mean, surely we can put together some type of matrix that would show us whether there is a, it makes sense for us to at least try to recoup expenses at least from what we are, what we are putting into the system there. So, yeah.

Bill Jeffers: I’ll explore that and get back with you, Councilman Sutton.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay. Thank you.

Bill Jeffers: Yes, sir.

President Abell: Any other questions? Mr. Winnecke?

Councilmember Winnecke: Just an observation, Bill. I think it’s a good idea if you’d like to change the names just to make them more modern. If you get with Mr. Deisher on the changes you’d like to see, so we can get that to our next job study meeting. I think that’s a good idea.

Bill Jeffers: I’m teased about that within the office by people who have those titles. Thank you.

President Abell: Is that all? Thank you.

Bill Jeffers: Thank you.

CONVENTION VISITORS BUREAU

President Abell: Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.

Marilee Fowler: Good morning. I’m Marilee Fowler with the Evansville Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. With me, is David Dunn, our board treasurer. And again, thank you for letting us have this opportunity to be moved up in the agenda. I’ll turn it over to David.

President Abell: We’re on 192, council.

David Dunn: Good morning, madam President and fellow members of the council. I’m respectful of your time today. We’ll keep our opening remarks brief, and then stand ready to answer any que