The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 17^th day of August, 2010 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 8:30 a.m. by County Council President Russell Lloyd, Jr.

President Lloyd: I would like to convene the opening for the Vanderburgh County budget hearings for 2011. Attendance roll call please.

COUNCILMEMBER	PRESENT	ABSENT
Councilmember Terry	X
Councilmember Bassemier	X
Councilmember Shetler	X
Councilmember Goebel	X
Councilmember Raben	X
Councilmember Kiefer	X
President Lloyd	X

President Lloyd: I would like to ask Councilman Raben to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand.

President Lloyd: The mechanics of this, we will have our officeholders present their budgets, also due to the length of our meeting we’ll try and get a break in at 10:00 or 10:30, we’ll see how the meeting goes. I would like to open up with a few remarks and then we’ll get into it. Last year this County Council performed a miracle when we cut the General Fund budget by $250,000. This year we’re going to need to perform another miracle, and we have less to work with. Let me explain. On the revenue side, our property tax revenues are growing maybe a little over one percent at best, and the recession in the general economy is finally hitting county government, and we’re going to see that in 2011. We know that the local income tax revenue, which is the one percent that comes out of paychecks in Vanderburgh County is going to be hit hard in 2011. The money that’s withheld is remitted to the State of Indiana and then they send it back to us. We know that, in prior years the county has received about $15 million, we call it COIT, C-O-I-T, and we know this is going to drop two to three million dollars in 2011. Somehow we’re going to have to make this shortfall up. I know our County Auditor, Mr. Fluty, is talking to the State trying to get the exact number, but we know it’s going to fall by a substantial amount. Miscellaneous revenues are growing, but they’re not going to be able to make up this kind of shortfall. So, when we look at this budget we have to realize there’s no sacred cows. In the computer area, the requests for hardware and software in our budget is up, the request was a 29 percent increase, we know that’s not sustainable. Our computer budget has increased 8.8 percent a year for the past four years, and this Council is going to have to look to find ways to reign this in. In personnel, we have to be committed to right sizing county government. At this point, I feel county government still has too many employees. This Council has implemented a hiring freeze, and I hope we’ll continue to do that next year, but it’s made us look carefully at open positions and try to find the best combination for county government. We’re fortunate that through the conservative actions of this

Council in prior years, we haven’t had to make drastic steps of layoffs or firings, but we need to look at all departments in county government, whether it’s the courts, whether it’s the Sheriff, whether it’s other areas, and we need to cut unnecessary employees. If we have revenue streams that will support an employee, we need to use it, whether that’s a grant, whether that’s miscellaneous revenues that are allowed to be used for employees. It will help our county General Fund if we can find other means to support employees in addition to having our departments look at areas where we can either eliminate employees or go to part time. To summarize, this is going to be another tough budget year. I don’t know if we can find money for employee raises, but that’s certainly something we’re going to try to do. We know our employees did without last year. The old cliche is we need to do more with less. Going forward, in 2011, we’re going to continue to ask our employees and our vendors of Vanderburgh County to try to do more with less. Thank you. We’ll go on to individual department budgets. Coming up first, if I can find my list here, where is that, oh, the County Treasurer, Mr. Davis.

Rick Davis: Rick Davis, Vanderburgh County Treasurer. For those of you at home, a month ago I gave a very detailed description of our budget for the Council, due to our in-house printing project, so, I will be brief today because you guys have already had the major rundown. Basically, our office has cut nearly $71,000 out of our budget. We were able to eliminate an employee due to some restructuring. We dropped our printing budget from $65,000 to $15,000, which is an 11.9 percent decrease in our budget from last year to this year overall. To eliminate an employee doesn’t sound like a lot, but we had only 13 in our office to begin with, and we’re now down to 12. There’s also a reassessment part time account that we have, we are eliminating it completely. We do not need any part time help. So, that’s another savings of $2,000. So, that’s it in a nutshell. I just want to thank the Council for helping me with the printing project. You were very supportive from the very beginning, and you’ve obviously seen some of the benefits in the first year automatically. I’m very happy to report that basically the $73,000 savings in our budget and you were a direct result of that. I appreciate it. I would also like to thank my co-workers, because eliminating an employee did put a little more work on everyone in the office. They do a fantastic job, we only have 12 people in there, and I would like to thank them. I get to stand here and take some of the credit for this today, but they deserve all of the credit because they work extremely hard.

Councilmember Bassemier: Rick, on your Printing, you did say, is this correct $65,000, 2010, and you’re requesting for 2011, $20,000, is that correct?

Councilmember Shetler: Rick, truly you have done an outstanding job. Greatly appreciate that. We brought this up when you discussed the printing a couple of weeks ago, I really do feel like it’s really important though that we account for the usage of that machine by other departments. What is really under the gun this year is the General Fund. In some of those areas if we can push some of that, those expenses, bring in revenue from other funds, then that would, I think, help us greatly. It may be nickle and diming here or there, but it could be, you know, accurately accounting for another $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, and we’re truly trying to look underneath every rock and stone that’s out there to see if that’s available. So, I don’t know if you’ve put in procedures yet to do that. That was only a couple of weeks ago, but, you know, if not, hopefully, by the first of the year something like that could be implemented.

Rick Davis: Absolutely. I’m open to any suggestions. As I mentioned before at the last meeting, our office has helped out with the Auditor’s office in folding some documents, we’ll help out the Assessor’s office in printing and folding documents. We printed the poll books for the Election Office for the primary. We anticipate doing that again in the General Election, and even the Sheriff has asked our help in printing and folding and stuffing 10,000 tax warrants. So, I’ll be able, I’m open to suggestions, and I will try to help out as many departments as I can in that area. I did get some statistics for you guys, you asked last time. The folder/inserter can handle up to ten million fold and stuffs. For the first year so far we’re only at 76,000. So, that thing has a long life ahead of it, if we give it proper care and maintenance. The printers that we purchased, I came before this body at the end of last year, I had gone to Old National Bank and they had a couple of earlier models of this particular printer, one of them had five million prints on it, the other had four million prints on it. The two that we have down there now have basically a half a million prints combined on them. So, both of those still have a long life left in them. We also have nine maintenance kits to go in them. We haven’t used a single one. You don’t use them until you hit 300,000 a piece. So, the maintenance kit is basically like rebuilding an engine and putting in a new transmission in a vehicle, in an automobile. So, the equipment that the county purchased has a long life ahead of it. We’ll try to utilize it as much as possible.

Councilmember Goebel: Rick, I would like to also thank you for the job you’ve done and make this Council’s job a little bit easier by coming up with cost savings to the county and taxpayer. In the one job that you have not replaced, was that through attrition? You just simply didn’t replace that person, instead of letting them go?

President Lloyd: Any other questions? Okay, I mean, I would like to also echo what the Councilmember said, we appreciate the cost savings, that you were able to reallocate the work without the employee. It looks like bringing the printing in-house has been quite a benefit to the county. Appreciate that work.

President Lloyd: Next would be Weights and Measures. We had that at the joint budget hearing, unless any other Councilmember had a question on that budget. Mr. Bassemier?

Councilmember Bassemier: I talked with Loretta yesterday, of course, she won’t be coming back until September the 1^st. She’s kind of concerned with her utilities and she’s working on that. She, it’s going to be a guessing game with her. So, she’ll see us in September.

President Lloyd: –there was a question about the utilities. Okay, well, hopefully, we’ll have better data by then.

Terry Dietsch: Welcome, Ms. Terry. I haven’t had the opportunity to welcome you.

President Lloyd: Page 89. I think most of the increases with the employees would be step increases.

President Lloyd: I mean, because we asked for flat line to determine....we’ll determine whether there’s going to be any raises, general raises–

President Lloyd: Any questions from Council? I guess, one question I would have while the others are looking, page 94 you’ve got Youth Care Center, large item in the budget. It looks like we’re projecting about a $50,000 increase, one point six million, is that, do you have any other information on that?

Terry Dietsch: I might draw the Council’s attention to this, 2011, I think will be the last year of that contract between the Council and the Commissioners and the Center.

Terry Dietsch: I presume someone is going to be taking a look at that shortly, after 2011.

President Lloyd: Okay, so, whether the Commissioners want to renew that contract, but we’ve got to take a look at that, but, obviously, we have to have somewhere to send the young people.

Councilmember Goebel: On page 92 of this book, Court Administrator, it’s 1690-1370. That seems to be a larger increase. Do you have that information in front of you?

Terry Dietsch: We did that because that matter is going to have to be taken up with the Job Study people, part of your Council, at a later time. Obviously, that will be adjusted one way or the other.

Councilmember Shetler: Just a couple, the, I guess, the Patient/Inmate Care, I mean, currently for the six months it’s been running at about $122,000, a little bit below the budget, and I noticed that you’ve got the same budget figure in there from last year. I guess, that’s a number that’s somewhat fluid that you don’t–

Terry Dietsch: It is, and I made a point to take a look at the figures as of the end of July, and we’re going to be right on the edge, I think. We may or may not make it, hopefully, we will.

Terry Dietsch: I’ve discussed this preliminarily with Judge Niemeier, and we’re going to make every effort to make certain that amount isn’t exceeded.

Councilmember Shetler: The, going back to the youth detention, the one point six, you said that’s by contract, does that mean that’s per inmate, or is that just a lump sum contract per month?

Terry Dietsch: Yes, no, my, the contract that was negotiated, and it’s been a long time since I’ve looked at it, was negotiated for a sum certain for each of the ten years, and it increased by a certain percentage each year. We are now at the, for 2011, that will be the last year of the contract.

Councilmember Raben: I think it....real quick, if I recall, I think we’re paying per bed. I think it’s 26 beds and there’s like a three percent increase annually or something like that within the contract.

Terry Dietsch: Yeah, and the particulars I’m not familiar with, but the contract itself sets out the payment that is to be made each year during the contract and a specific amount.

Councilmember Shetler: So, in other words, if we have fewer inmates, for whatever reason, that isn’t going to...we’re not going to affect any savings by that?

Councilmember Raben: No, but, I think, real quick, I think it was mentioned at one time that there would be possibly credit given if other counties–

Councilmember Raben: Right, we committed initially, or the county committed initially to that set number of beds, but I don’t know that we’ve ever seen any credit given towards other counties taking opportunities of those empty beds. I don’t–

Terry Dietsch: Well, I was not a party to that contract. Those issues are things that should be addressed before the next contract is entered into.

Councilmember Shetler: The same thing on Juvenile Home Detention, a budget of $38,000, and it appears at the six month level it was going below that by some dollars, but do you project that to be–

Terry Dietsch: – is going to be. It could turn out, and we hope it’s going to turn out to be less than that.

Councilmember Shetler: Right. I guess, the other question I have is on the Law Books, because I noticed, and it seems to me that might be something a little bit more–

Terry Dietsch: We are attempting to negotiate now a new contract with West Law. We have a preliminary proposal. Whether we’re going to be able to accept that or whether we can do better, we don’t know at this time. However, last year we asked for $29,000, Council allowed $26,000, and we went over that. So, for this year we assumed that $29,000 and added ten percent to that, because we don’t know yet what the costs are going to be for 2011. We’re hoping that it’s going to be better, but we don’t know that.

Councilmember Shetler: Is that like a standard subscription then that you’ll pay a monthly or –

Terry Dietsch: And, periodically, and we have no control over this, new volumes will be published. In addition, during the year, or during the years, when there’s no new volume, pocket parts are printed to keep up with the changes made by the legislature in all the areas of the law. You have to pay for the pocket parts also. So, you know, those things add up, Mr. Shetler.

President Lloyd: Alright that’s contractual with West Law, so it’s mainly subscription, right?

President Lloyd: Right, and it’s multiple terminals all the way through the court system. Okay, other questions on Superior Court?

Councilmember Terry: Can you also tell me on the Home Study/Adoption, there hasn’t been any funds expended, but there’s a $10,000 request there?

Terry Dietsch: Well, I checked, and there’s another $1,600 that we haven’t added to this yet. We don’t know what that’s going to be for a year. The reason for that is this, prior to 2010, the cost of the home studies for adoptions, generally, family adoptions for those who could not afford the cost of a home study, and a home study is mandatory, was paid by the State.

Terry Dietsch: No longer. So, we’re new in the cost end for the county, and we just arbitrarily picked a figure.

Terry Dietsch: We hope it’s going to be considerably less than the $10,000 we’ve requested. We will have a much better idea at the end of the year what to ask for in the future.

Councilmember Goebel: This is a question in general, on page 95, the very first item, Copy Machine Lease, you’re requesting $7,000, it’s just not, is this a special type of copy machine that meets your–

Councilmember Goebel: Four of them? Do we have a county-wide program that plans for, just in general, not just for the courts?

Bill Fluty: They’re working on that, it’s called refresh. I think, Matt Arvay and his group have been working on that to get the county to actually participate in that. The city has gone to kind of a different way of how they look at copy machines, and, I think, he’s presented it one time, but we haven’t really bought on to the plan yet.

Councilmember Goebel: Okay, it just seems like we might have some cost savings if we do come up with a general plan for the entire, all the offices.

Bill Fluty: In a nutshell, what it is trying to do is reduce copy machines as it evolved with computers over the years, people would have a computer and a copier, or a fax, or a printer at their desk. Now, it’s going to try to move back to have a centralized printer, where you will send that and make your copies from that. It would actually reduce those and the maintenance and the toner and try to reduce costs that way. It’s just a different concept than we’re familiar with.

Terry Dietsch: Mr. Fluty, if either of those options were to occur or a combination of those, would that be on a bid basis?

Bill Fluty: I, you know, I’m not the guy to answer all of these questions. Matt is, and I think, Tim, you’re pretty familiar with all of this. He would be your expert in that area.

Bill Fluty: Uh-huh. I’m kind of on the fringes of it. I think the city is doing that right now, which is reducing “x” amount of printers and copiers and going to a centralized copy machine or printer, and actually people will be coming out of their desks to go to one. There’s a savings to that.

President Lloyd: Other questions for Superior Court? Okay, we’ll move on to, I guess, Judge, are you going to take the Drug Court?

Terry Dietsch: I am going to do the....do you have any questions on the Supplemental?

President Lloyd: Okay, well, let’s go on to 2620, Superior Court Supplemental Adult Probation, which is page 145. So, you don’t want to jump in on Drug Court? Okay, that’s alright.

Terry Dietsch: Well, I will attempt to answer whatever questions you might have.

President Lloyd: Alright, well, let’s go to Adult Probation since we’ve turned the page here. This budget is basically flat. It went up fifty dollars. Any questions? Mainly, these are probation officers that serve the court, serve all the judges?

Terry Dietsch: What we have done over the years is some of the probation fee money, we had used that to bring the salaries in line with the State minimum, and by that we didn’t have to use General Fund, County General Fund. So, in effect we saved the county money. I did a calculation years ago, and it was, I think we had saved like $55,000 or so, and that was years ago.

President Lloyd: So, these employees are full time, but 80 percent or 90 percent of their salary is paid for by fees through the probation?

Terry Dietsch: –their salaries are basically paid like any other employee, however, to bring those salaries in line with what the State required, we augmented those salaries by use of the Probation Users Fee.

President Lloyd: Any questions of Council on this one? Okay. The judge graciously agreed to try to take any questions on Drug Court. That’s page 99.

President Lloyd: Okay. This budget is up about $3,900. It looks like mainly a step increase, employee and insurance, and nothing else really. Any questions on this? Okay.

President Lloyd: Right, those are granted, right, by contract. Okay, thank you very much, Judge Dietsch, appreciate it.

President Lloyd: Okay, we’ll move on to department 1360, Circuit Court. That’s on page 83. We have Judge Heldt here.

Carl Heldt: Members of Council, Carl Heldt, Circuit Court. I also have Karen Angermeier with me, who is our Administrative Assistant. The county, the General Fund budget, I think, is flat, other than step increases. I will be happy to answer any questions you have.

Councilmember Raben: Just a quick question, Judge, as Russ stated at the opening of the meeting, we’re going to be making cuts, maybe deeper than we’ve made in the past few years, and yours being one of the, a fairly large budget, if cuts are necessary to make, do you want to offer any suggestions?

Carl Heldt: You know, I know that I’ve had employees working weekends on their own time. I sure can’t get along with any less, fewer employees. I would like to have more than what I’ve got.

Councilmember Raben: I’m not referring to employees, but other accounts like supply accounts.

Carl Heldt: Well, we have done something in the past year, haven’t we, Karen? (Inaudible) have taken over some things. Tell them what it is, if you would.

Karen Angermeier: Last year we moved approximately $6,000 in General Fund money of copy machine supplies, which is copy paper into our User Fee budget, along with some copy machine expense last year.

Carl Heldt: We’ll sure consider it, but, you know, we’ve been pretty flat the last couple of years. We’re sort of going downhill, I think, and as you said last year no good deed goes unpunished. I appreciate your concerns, and I know what your job is, and all I can say is we’ll think about it and if we can help out we will.

President Lloyd: How is your case load compared to prior years? Is it up as well?

Carl Heldt: Circuit Court doesn’t have misdemeanors. It’s the felonies, and I don’t know the exact figures, but I know it’s up.

Carl Heldt: You can see it in the court calendar and probably in the jail population as well.

President Lloyd: Okay. Just for, even though our population is growing by a small amount, more criminal activity for some reason.

Carl Heldt: Well, at least, maybe they’re catching more, I don’t know. We had two alarms from the Sheriff about female population, we had another one today or yesterday that the female population is growing to the extent that it’s causing a problem, because they’ve got to dedicate a pod to the females when they get more females than they can handle. So, we have been inventorying the female population to see what we can do to put them on the fast track, some of them, or see if some of them can have their bonds lowered. We did that about a month ago and it looks like we have to do it again. So, it’s a concern I know for the Sheriff. He could probably speak to it better than I.

Councilmember Goebel: I’ll go back to the same question I asked considering copy machines, is that for a number of copy machines that you lease, too? You handle that in-house, correct? We don’t have a county-wide lease program? Okay, thank you.

Carl Heldt: I would hope that when they look at these printers and copy machines and getting up and walking from place to place, I hope they consider the time cost of having an employee walk, you know, back and forth, a hundred times in a day, away from their desk. I hope they’ll think about that.

Bill Fluty: That’s also a concern in my office as well. I know it’s being presented, and it’s actually a concept of allocating “x” amount of dollars every year for copies, copy leases and then kind of reducing the machines that we have presently.

Carl Heldt: The thing is I have employees spending an hour a day walking back and forth across the office, and I’m not saying that to be the case, I don’t know what the case is, I think that would be something that we need to look at.

Bill Fluty: I think that’s been discussed. I think what’s happening that maybe some of your office personnel can participate and some couldn’t is what they’re looking at.

President Lloyd: Right, I mean, that’s a productivity issue, and sometimes when you walk across the office you have to stop and chat with somebody or whatever. It’s a trade off. Any other questions on Circuit Court? Okay. We’ll move on to Circuit Court/Supplemental Adult Probation.

Carl Heldt: As Judge Dietsch said for their Supplemental, this comes from, the income doesn’t come from the county taxpayer at all. It comes from probation user fees. Also, the fees that we are generating from the Department of Correction for the community transition program, which is a program where some inmates are brought back early and placed in an intensive probation program for the last couple of months of their sentence. I think it’s flat, except there’s a big jump in insurance that you probably have noticed, and I’m told that’s because we have some people that weren’t on county insurance and now want to be. So, once again, this is, doesn’t use county funds.

President Lloyd: Right, and that’s page 142, 143 and 144. Right, the insurance jumping about $40,000. So, you’ve got some employees that want, by their right want to choose county health insurance. Okay. You’ve got a vacancy for Probation Officer, is that just someone that’s not going to be replaced?

President Lloyd: Oh, 1460-2600. It looks like it’s not, it’s not been a person for several years.

Karen Angermeier: A lot of these smaller amounts are due to the judicial center pay guidelines that we have to pay a little bit more. Once you get to the guidelines at 15 years and above, the State minimum is higher than the county’s, and that’s where you see a lot of these extra amounts come into play, and people with masters degrees.

President Lloyd: Any other questions on Supplemental Adult Probation? Alright, thank you very much, Judge Heldt.

Carl Heldt: I don’t want you to think I’m brushing you off on that, but let us look into it.

President Lloyd: Okay, department 1010, County Clerk, page 1. County Clerk, Ms. Susie Kirk.

Councilmember Kiefer: So, I don’t guess there’s any room for cutting any employees or not filling positions? Trying to be funny here with you this morning.

Susan Kirk: Well, you know, at least we have judges, the Sheriff, me, we can all vouch that the case load is going up. I think the judges, the Sheriff and me, if the case load goes down, will be the first to come up here and try to cut, as I’ve said every time I’ve been up here. So, but it is up, it’s not, I’m not dreaming this. It’s unfortunate that we are busy.

President Lloyd: You’ve got a large increase in Office Supplies, which is on page four.

Susan Kirk: We always ask for what we use, and then you give us less and then we come back and have to ask for more.

President Lloyd: You have $100,000 on Record Storage, which is 3603, is that going to hold? We’re with Kinder, the same contract?

Susan Kirk: Yes, we’re doing very well. My staff is, as far as destruction of records, so instead of, you know, it keep going up every year now, we’ve held it....I don’t know, this is about our third year now to hold it right at the $100,000 mark. That includes some of our scanning and microfilming too. So, we’re at least getting rid of as much as we’re bringing in.

President Lloyd: Okay, by doing scanning and microfilming you’re able to destroy paper records?

Susan Kirk: Well, yes and no. The statutes, depending on what the records are, some you have to keep forever, some are like 25 years, some are ten years, you know. Now, there will come a point, I will forewarn you where we will be totally caught up on the destruction of records, and at that point in time, if things still stay the same, with case loads going up or even staying as they are, it would start to back track again and we’ll start having to file more than what we’re getting rid of, because we’ll be, like I said, we’ll be pretty well caught up. But, so far we’re doing pretty good with that.

President Lloyd: If the offender is a male or female, that doesn’t make any difference to you, does it?

Susan Kirk: Well, no, we prefer non-female, non-male and just go home and be nice and not even come to our office, but it looks like the girls are getting in trouble now. That’s pretty bad, it used to be it was always the boys.

Susan Kirk: You know, we just keep that there kind of in case. I don’t even think we’ve even used anything with that this year. It’s just, like I said, one of those kind of a back up type thing, if something happened we could go ahead and buy something, but I’m not going to fight you over that one. If you want that $1,000 have at it, and if we have to get something we’ll do the best that we can until we can get Council to approve it.

Councilmember Goebel: The Maintenance Contract, request for $20,000, exactly what is that?

Susan Kirk: It’s printers that we have over there, for the most part. Right, Tim? It’s pretty well the printers?

Susan Kirk: The maintenance contract for the printers. We have, of course, we have one kind of big one, and, then, again, almost everybody has one, but they’re not maintenance, it’s the big ones that we actually do the maintenance on. Misdemeanor Traffic, they have a bigger one down there. I’m not too sure what some of the other is, but I will check with Tracy and get you a line item list of exactly what those maintenance costs are, but they are, that’s what we pay. That’s not a, you know, padded amount. That’s what we pay, but I will get the Council, I can e-mail you, like I said, an itemized list of exactly what that $20,000 goes to. I’ll even give you the printer number.

Councilmember Goebel: That’s fine. It just looks like maybe less was expended than the amount that you had requested over the past few years, not by a whole lot.

Susan Kirk: Well, and this is why, because of my administrator, Tracy, she is always checking to see who’s got the best deals. During that time we have switched, you know, like they may have another printer that’s less maintenance costs, maybe you get more copies, toner is cheaper. She’s continually doing that. So, that’s why sometimes that’s a little bit cheaper is because she’s a good shopper.

Councilmember Terry: I just have a question for clarification, just for personal knowledge, Extra Help, can you explain that to me just a bit? Then, I guess, in relation to, I think you’re eliminating a Bookkeeper/Clerk?

President Lloyd: Other questions? Okay, I guess, the Council’s satisfied with that. We’ll move on to 1210, Election Office, page 60.

Susan Kirk: Well, at least we’ve saved over $200,000 there by switching companies. So, I’m happy about that one. Always remember, the city pays us back for this one.

President Lloyd: Right, this is 2011, so the budget, $431,000, and the city, all of that staff use the city would pay for.

Susan Kirk: Yes, they, if you’ll notice, especially line item Contractual Services, 3530, they will pay that also, because the billing system, the way it is now, compared to what ES&S was, it’s very definitive as to what each year, what those Contractual Services are for that election. Always before it was a little difficult to bill the city, you know, figuring it out was kind of a guesstimate, but now we know, for a fact, and I told them this is what you need to budget. So, we will be reimbursed for that, for the whole thing.

President Lloyd: And, there’s several others around the state using that same vendor, right? And that’s worked out well?

Susan Kirk: Yes, it’s, and it will, a lot of them folded just because ES&S waiting, you know, they kept waiting until the last minute, but what, three of us held out. I think when the other counties that are using ES&S, when those contracts are up, they will move on to RBM so that they can have a cost saving and actually know what it is going to cost. We did even save a little bit of money from what they projected. Not much, but a few thousand dollars, just from RBM from the primary election.

Councilmember Raben: Did we, back to Contractual Services, do we need to even budget that since we’re being reimbursed?

Bill Fluty: In the past you’ve budgeted some portion of that, probably 50 percent of that, and then, for the primary, and I think the primary is a little cheaper as I remember, but not much. I think Susie can tell you where she spends the most money. Then, they reimburse us somewhere in June or July and we put that money back in for the fall election. So, that’s been done in the past. It’s just how you would like to do it.

Bill Fluty: That’s what I’m talking about. Well, but you need the money before you’re going to get, you’re not going to get the rest of it back until after November. So, she needs up front money to handle the primary, then we’ll bill them for the November, but bottom line, you’re going, you know–

Bill Fluty: With direction here, because I think, I don’t think it’s as simple as taking each one of these line items and cutting it in half.

Susan Kirk: Sometimes, actually the primaries can cost us a little bit more, only because we have to open like in February because we have filing and different things to do just to prepare for the year. Whereas in the general election we open the day after Labor Day. So, there’s less time, but then sometimes more employees. It would be, I’m like Bill, I guess, half and half, but I would be kind of afraid just to cut it in half and then have to come back and get more money. We’re going to get reimbursed. Of course, it’s all taxpayers money, so it’s kind of–

Councilmember Raben: –I’m just trying to remember what we did in the past. I think the last city election we didn’t budget for. I don’t think we included it in the budget.

Susan Kirk: You didn’t. I’m just telling you what this budget is. Okay? Then, now if you want me to, I can go back and give you....say if we even did maybe two thirds, if we could do two thirds of this and have a little buffer. If you want to cut that back, that’s fine, by two thirds. I can go through here and whittle it down or just take a third out of every line item, if you want to. Or I’ll do it for you. Then we can get reimbursed and finish out the year. But, I can’t turn in, you know, I have to turn in the whole budget, what it’s going to cost for the year.

President Lloyd: I think it’s helpful to have the whole cost of that contract, and then we need to decide how we’re going to handle that. Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Question for anybody, has the unification committee decided exactly if it’s going to ‘11 or ‘12 yet on the referendum?

Councilmember Shetler: –because I know that they pushed it off from ‘10, but I don’t know, I didn’t know if they defined that.

Susan Kirk: Well, the reason being is, if they, and I assume this is part of it, I shouldn’t just automatically say, but if they have the referendum in the city, then I’ve got to redo this budget, because–

Susan Kirk: It was my understanding, just from what I’ve heard and seen, is that they are going to wait until, if they couldn’t get it on this one, they were going to wait until 2012, just cost effective, the whole county, so forth and so on. What’s one more year? So, that’s the way I understand it, unless something drastic changes.

Councilmember Shetler: So, let me, so the way you’re understanding that is that if the referendum would be on the ballot in ‘11, the county would have to absorb the entire cost of the election? Is that what you’re saying?

Susan Kirk: –the county precincts. Now then, I can’t tell you, normally the city pays for this. It’s a city election. I’m not going to say that somebody from the city’s not going to come to you and say, well, hey, you’ve got a county thing on there, and maybe you ought to at least pay part of it. I’m not going there. That would be up to probably the President of the Council and the President of the City Council to decide that, but they always have paid for it in the past. So, I think the thing to do, and the thing to look forward to is they are going to pay this amount for the city. If there is a referendum, the county then is going to have to pick up the county precincts–

Susan Kirk: –and pay for the polling places. We’ll have to, you know, absentee ballots, it will just be one of those things to where it’s going to be a lot more work for us to keep track of what did we do in the county, so that we’re not, you know, getting things mixed up. Like I said, absentee ballots, stuff like that that we send to the county.

Councilmember Shetler: Underneath the Rent, you’re showing that you paid out on a scale of about $7,300 for this year. Yet, for next year you have it budgeted for $4,600.

Councilmember Shetler: Okay, that’s just rent for the polling places. I’m thinking about the rent for the Election Office itself. Is that in there then?

Susan Kirk: No, the Building Authority, I don’t know who pays that. The County Commissioners pay that.

Susan Kirk: All this is for polling places. This would be, you know, if it’s like a public place, a library is $15–

Susan Kirk: Of course, you know, that’s what that is. So, it’s less because there’s less precincts.

President Lloyd: The reorganization, the only thing I would add to that, to do it in 2011 we would have to have a change in State law. The way the ordinance was written, it was in a general election year, and a city election is a different type of election. It’s a special election.

President Lloyd: So, but, I mean, our legislators could do that. It would kind of be up to the committee. I don’t know, I don’t think we’ll have the information by the time we need to finish this budget. But, we’ll kind of watch that and see. Right now it would have to be 2012. They could do ‘11, but the legislature would have to have help on that. Then, the county would have to pay their portion, and whether the county could do vote centers or something, hopefully, something cheaper than a general election. The county, you’re just talking about one question.

Susan Kirk: We are, until the State allows any more counties to participate in vote centers, I’ve got some of the information. Grant you, there would be up front costs, it would be a while before we could save any money, but that’s what we really want to do. But, it’s, I don’t know, I can’t remember if it’s the Senate or the House that keeps holding that up. Also, I want to let you know that we are, more than likely, we’re probably about 80 percent sure that we are going to try to do the late fee, remember I, on the courts, late court costs. Remember me sending you that stuff out?

Susan Kirk: Okay. It is more work for the staff to do that. The gal, and I can’t think of which county it is right off hand, she sent me quite a bit of information. What they did was, for the money that was generated, their Council allowed them to keep 40 percent of that to actually do the work. So, the county was picking up 60 percent. I don’t know exactly how much money it’s going to be yet, but I think it’s going to be quite a bit. Also, I’m trying to see, because we have Capital Recovery, we’ve had them for several years that’s brought in, gosh, probably close to $250,000. We just get a check every now and then for late fees and child support, the administration costs, not, you know, fathers that aren’t paying, but I’m going to see if there’s some way that maybe Capital Recovery, if there’s some way we can get like an interface or whatever for them to do it. Then, that way, the county just gets the whole shabang. We’re talking, you know, I’m sure it would end up being around $100,000 a year. So, that will help quite a bit too.

President Lloyd: I think it was Porter County that was doing that. Does that sound right? On the late fees.

Susan Kirk: It could be. Porter, I know, we dealt with elections so much, I’m still, I’m getting my election and some of the County Clerk stuff....it may have been. But, she’s, like I said, she said that that’s what their county decided to do was go ahead and do it. The judges are in agreement, they had a meeting, and they agreed that, yes, we’re going to try to do that, it’s just that we have to change around some of the practices and some of the computer, you know, stuff to do it. But, hopefully, I hope that by next year we’re going to be up and running with it. So, that will just generate extra dollars.

President Lloyd: What would be an example of a late fee? Would it be someone that’s late paying a fine?

Susan Kirk: The judges will work with that, and probably work with you also. Are you the liaison just for the courts, or just me?

Susan Kirk: They’ll probably be working with both of you up front, you know, just to kind of see what we want to do here with it when we get to it. We’re just not quite there yet. We’re just trying to figure out the procedures and how we can implement it with not enough staff.

President Lloyd: The Commissioners are over fees. So, I think they would have to approve it as well, like when they do the fees.

Susan Kirk: Yeah, there’s quite a little dog and pony show that we have to go through just to get to where we can begin. But, I just want to be sure and have, you know, everything lined up, costs, duties, what do we have to do, to be sure that, you know, we’re not missing something. But, that will generate some money. It’s coming, just not quite yet.

Councilmember Goebel: Back to the Election Office, if the referendum would come to play next year, do you have any definite idea of how much that would cost the county itself to set up the voting places outside the city limits?

Susan Kirk: If you look at last year’s budget, I don’t have that with me, but that would give you just about what that would cost. Because it would be the county, I don’t, off the top of my head–

Councilmember Goebel: No, I mean, could you find that out and give us that information?

Susan Kirk: Oh, absolutely. I will e-mail you the budget that we had last year, and, well, yeah, and it will show you...and the polling places. The polling places, the workers, the inspectors, judges, clerks, it says what that is for all 131 precincts, and you can see what the difference is.

Councilmember Goebel: Well, I would think that would be reduced, because it’s only one question for the people in Vanderburgh County living outside of the city.

Susan Kirk: You would think that it would, but you still have to have the judge, two judges, two clerks, an inspector. You still have to have the four, of course, that doesn’t cost to put the machines out there, but, no, you still have to go through all of that if you only have one teeny, tiny thing on the ballot. You still have to do it. It’s the law.

Councilmember Goebel: Okay, I think that would be good for public knowledge to see what the cost would be.

Susan Kirk: I’ll give you the difference. Do you want it broke down into each one?

Councilmember Goebel: No, just the general ball park figure what it would cost the county.

Susan Kirk: I knew you were going to ask that question. In the county, just outside county?

Susan Kirk: Armstrong, Center is ten, German is seven, Knight is four, Perry is ten, Scott, five and Union. Did anybody add that up?

President Lloyd: Well, and if you went to vote centers, that cost is going to be less. According to this budget book, in 2010 we expended $98,000, that doesn’t sound right, does it?

President Lloyd: Oh, that’s half a year, I’m sorry. 2008 we spent $241,000 on elections, and that was Presidential, so it was probably a little bit more expensive.

Susan Kirk: It is, where you come into larger voter turn out is basically absentees and stuff like that. Although, because of our libraries, we voted 27,000 people early in 2008. So, and we, that’s not paper, that’s actually going to the libraries and voting on the machines. Of course, we had to pay the staff, and we will have that again this year. We’ll have the libraries open, I’m going to figure, go back through here again, maybe instead of 15 days, maybe ten. If it’s not going to work, maybe a week before the election just to make sure that we’ve got the money to fund that. So, but we will have the early voting.

President Lloyd: But, I think, if you went to vote centers that cost would go down. So, but, if you could do five or six vote centers for those 40 precincts–

Susan Kirk: Yeah, it’s, the way they have it now, for every 10,000 voters you’re supposed to have a vote center. Although, the three counties that are doing it have more vote centers than that.

Susan Kirk: Because that’s really, you know, and your cost is, obviously, we need up to date, we would have to have laptops in every one of the vote centers, more than one laptop, and the software to go with that. So, that’s really your cost there, but you’re going to save, in the long run, you’re going to save quite a bit of money. So, because the libraries have just been so gracious to let us use their facilities for free. We are the only county in Indiana with six, including the Election Office are (Inaudible) sites.

President Lloyd: (Inaudible) combining them. Okay, a lot of questions there that are probably beyond the scope of this hearing. Any other questions on the Election Office? Alright, thank you so much, Mrs. Kirk.

Susan Kirk: Okay, thank you, and when I come back, remember the judge, Sheriff, everybody said numbers are up. When I come back to fill my employee position, unless you just want to let me go ahead and do that today so we can actually start working.

Tony Bushrod: This is Connie Carrier, I’m Tony Bushrod, we’re with the Voter Registration Office. I’m sure you all don’t have any questions. It’s the same as last year.

President Lloyd: Questions from Councilmembers on Voters Registration? Yeah, this budget is a flat budget. Although, there’s one item floating around, the letter from the Secretary of State.

President Lloyd: In a nutshell, the federal government had been reimbursing states–

President Lloyd: –for voter registration lists, a state-wide list, which is what we’re on, we’ve been on for several years. Now, we’ve got a letter from the Secretary of State asking that the county, if you look at page two, they’re asking Vanderburgh County to fund approximately $66,695 for maintaining the state-wide list. Did you guys have–

Tim Van Cleave: Fundamentally, if you look into that, there’s also another $11,000 charge that they want in the last attachment for network connectivity. We believe that we could probably reduce that by letting the Election Office go onto the city-county network. There would be some licensing charges that the State did not pick up when they initially purchased those for connectivity licenses. These are Microsoft products. Then, with the removal of that state network connection, it would probably be prudent to also have a back up internet connection for election day and election night activities, in the event that our primary provider should have a failure, we would have a fall back to a different provider to try to connect to. That back up would be less than the $11,000 that the State is wanting to charge for theirs at present pricing.

President Lloyd: Where they’re coming up with this, I guess, on page seven it’s got Vanderburgh County total voters 137,061, percent of the whole state’s voters, 3.2 percent. They, I guess, they prorated that two million dollars through every county, and they would prorate Vanderburgh for $66,695.

Tim Van Cleave: –on past years support costs. That’s making the assumption that the vendor that supports the State application does not have an increase. So, it is typical for three to six percent increase in software maintenance costs (Inaudible).

President Lloyd: It says voters as of July 2010, so would that be our registered voters for Vanderburgh? Is that what–

Councilmember Kiefer: I think, also it says from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012, so it looks like our potential expense would be half of that $66,695, instead of the whole amount.

President Lloyd: Right, that’s a good point. I guess, they’re fitting that to the State’s budget year. It starts July 1.

Councilmember Kiefer: So, you’re saying they could bill us the entire amount this year, instead of prorated over the two years.

Tim Van Cleave: What they’re trying to do is put a notice out for the county governments to know that if the State does not fund this software initiative, that that cost will fall back to the counties. It is possible that the State legislature will fully fund this.

President Lloyd: Okay, then, Tim, you had indicated the, page nine, Vanderburgh’s cost on the SVRS Network Solution. You think we could take that in-house and save that $11,000?

Tim Van Cleave: Yes. I believe the network connectivity licensing that the Voters Registration would need is about $225-$230 a computer. So, somewhere around $1,100-$1,200. That’s a one time cost. If we are able to do the enterprise agreement plan with Microsoft for the whole county, then we wouldn’t have to necessarily come up with this specific money out of this budget. That would come out of the Computer Services budget for the enterprise agreements. Then, like I said, it would be wise to have a back up internet connection, because once, right now the back up plan if the city-county network was to go down on election day, our plans are to go down to the Voters Registration Office and use their State connection as our back up. During the day there are questions about where polling sites are, and if somebody is a valid voter, if you can’t access the election system on election day, you can’t direct those voters to the proper place. So, that is very important to have that connection to the State website. They are in and out of that all day long on election day. Then, of course, we use it to post the results to the internet at night.

President Lloyd: So, this letter, at this point, is a proposal from the Secretary of State? It still has to be enacted by the legislature? Any other questions on this? Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Not on this, I do have a question for both Connie and Tony. I know that in the last several years we have taken an ax to your department fairly sharply, particularly in the Deputy areas and stuff. I kind of, am somewhat familiar with the operation or the office, if any office, I guess, is in this building seasonal, it would seem to me that the Voters Registration Office has a lot of down time.

Councilmember Shetler: Well, there’s certainly some very hectic times of the year when registration is going on and other things, but, I think, there’s a few times during the year that it slows down or mellows out. I’m just wondering if it wouldn’t be more prudent for us to look at trying to supplement our full time Deputies with a couple part time people, particularly in those busy times. Perhaps, instead of having just two Deputies, maybe we would have, end up with four Deputies at a part time or seasonal type of job that could afford some savings here to the county in the long run, both through reduction in benefits and reduction in actual outlay, you know, dollars per hour.

Tony Bushrod: We register people, people die every day, people move every day, people go to jail every day, we must upkeep these records on a daily basis, the voter registration records for Vanderburgh County. People register just to come in to get I.D., to go to the license branches to get I.D.’s. A voter registration card is one of the first things that they need when they go to get I.D.’s. We’re always busy.

Councilmember Shetler: Alright, I understand registration is an on-going process to some degree, but there are busier times than others. I mean, you get a push by both parties, you know, prior to the election, and I don’t remember the exact windows that you have to actually do it, but there are voters registration drives that certainly have an impact on new registrations that are there.

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah. How many registered voters do you have right now on the rolls?

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, and, see, we have, what, a population count and kids and everything of 170,000. So, I mean, we’re not taking those people’s, we’re not updating the list, you know, I don’t think on a daily basis as it is.

Tony Bushrod: The lists are updated daily. We receive death notices from the State, we receive incarcerations from the county.

Councilmember Shetler: Right, I don’t know if you guys were here in the beginning, but as Councilman Lloyd pointed out, we are in a very difficult situation this year.

Councilmember Shetler: We’ve been really very unique among other counties in the State in that we have not laid anyone off, and that we have not been in a position here to have to ask for, you know, real drastic reductions in anything, and yet we’ve been able to maintain a balance. We are going to be hit with a three million dollar deficit in our COIT account, which is going to impact the General Fund. We need to look for some areas for making some cuts and to try to do what we can to make it, yet at the same time be very efficient. I don’t know that this is going to be a great savings to switch it from some part time people to full time people, but I would estimate that you’re probably looking at at least $30,000 that could be saved by trying to augment the full time people, the two full time people with some part time seasonal workers.

Connie Carrier: It’s too intense to try to train part time people. We had to go to Ivy Tech for training on this computer.

Councilmember Shetler: Right. What you end up with though, in a lot of cases, particularly, you know, there are regular people who want to come back year after year. You have that in the Election Office, I mean, we have people that you can pretty well count on that year after year they’re going to be back. Maybe, you know, one doesn’t show up out of the four, or five, or six, but it tends to be a fairly good thing for them. The timing is right. It’s mom’s that want to be home with their kids when they’re out after school, it’s, you know, maybe some early retirees, but there are plenty of people out there looking for that kind of work.

Connie Carrier: We’ve always invited any of you to come down and see what we do and no one ever has. I think you get the impression we’re, we don’t do much.

Councilmember Shetler: –I’m just, I’m saying that I’m not so sure that we can’t make that office a little more cost effective by using some part time rather than a couple of the full times that we have there. That’s all. I’m not indicating that you guys are sitting on, your know, your thumbs.

President Lloyd: Let me ask a question, and I’ve had conversations with you in the past, both of you, the State computer, it’s slower than what we had before, isn’t it? Or is it? Or have they gotten all of the bugs worked out of it?

Tony Bushrod: So, you know, while that’s coming back up, we’re filing, doing transfers, death notices.

President Lloyd: Because when you’re making changes, that’s going into that State data base.

President Lloyd: Right, okay. So, is that real time where if you made a change in the morning it would be available in the afternoon?

President Lloyd: Okay, then, so ‘11 you’ll have a city election, which the last city election you had the two extra people as full time Deputies. So, I guess, we’ll have to see how that goes.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, just a question, Tony, you mentioned that folks come in to get voter registration cards prior to getting identification?

Councilmember Raben: How do we give voters registration cards to people without identification?

Tony Bushrod: Now, if they send something through the mail, then they’ve got to show proof, but, I mean, they can come in and not have anything.

Councilmember Raben: You don’t even have to have the whole social security number?

Connie Carrier: We (Inaudible) both, social security number. The system will tell us if they are dead or alive.

Councilmember Raben: It seems like an invitation for voter fraud. Okay, thanks, but it’s State law, huh?

President Lloyd: Okay, but anyway someone could come in and if they give you a social security number, let’s say I had lost all of my I.D., I need a voter registration card, and if that number doesn’t show as a match with anything, then you have to issue a card to them?

Connie Carrier: (Inaudible) changed their, excuse me, recommendations to get a drivers license or I.D., you need extra identification.

President Lloyd: Okay, well, that’s the keys to the kingdom, right, a drivers license? Any other questions? Alright, thank you very much. 1371, Drug and Alcohol Deferral Service, page 97.

Deloris Koch: Good morning, Deloris Koch, Program Director. We’ve asked for no increases except one step increase for an employee. No other changes.

President Lloyd: Right, and this budget increased approximately $2,900, which is the step increase that you indicated.

Councilmember Shetler: This is a question that’s come up the last few years, Rent?

Deloris Koch: So far, talking to the landlord I don’t anticipate any changes in the rent–

Deloris Koch: But, it’s not the court office building, it’s called the Landmark Building actually.

Deloris Koch: We’re still there. So far I don’t anticipate changes in the lease agreement.

Councilmember Shetler: You know, once again, my issue with this, and, I know, I think, Joe, you may have worked on this last year–

Councilmember Kiefer: Ed and I met with her, and I went through the property. I mean, it’s a cheap deal, but the issue is, is we’ve got all of this vacant space in the Civic Center.

Councilmember Shetler: Well, we have the Old Courthouse that we’re maintaining that’s, I don’t know what the occupancy rate there is, but it’s huge.

Councilmember Shetler: Or, yeah, the vacancy rate. Then, this building here is, you know, we’ve got some issues here that we’re having to absorb. I hate spending $15,000 outside of, to, you know, for anyone else for any other reason. I understand the issues before, the privacies and some other issues, but I just, again, you know, we’ve got a tough time here and we need to look at everything we possibly can.

Councilmember Kiefer: I think making a switch long term would save us some money, but I have a feeling that initial switch, this year, if she went to the Old Courthouse we probably would end up spending more than $15,000 making the move, but long term, obviously, it saves us money over the course of several years.

Deloris Koch: My biggest question is who foots the cost to prepare the space for our moving in? Who’s going to remodel, refurbish, refurnish whatever area we may be moving to?

Councilmember Kiefer: That’s what I meant by the initial cost of the move would probably exceed the $15,000.

Deloris Koch: Does that come out of my budget or your budget? You also spoke, I believe, with Mr. Rector–

Councilmember Kiefer: It’s kind of the chicken or the egg type deal, I mean, you know, we could spend the money and it’s going to exceed the $15,300, but it would save us money, you know, year three, four and five, you know, down the road it’s going to save us the money.

Councilmember Shetler: But, we, you know, keep in mind, we are paying rent in this building for vacant space.

Councilmember Shetler: I understand that, I understand that, but, we are already paying the rent on this building for the vacant space, space that’s not being occupied, the county is absorbing that.

Councilmember Kiefer: And, we still have expenses to operate the Old Courthouse too.

Councilmember Kiefer: I mean, there’s no question. I mean, I’m in favor of making a move, it’s just that we’re going to have some initial costs to make the move that would probably be greater than the $15,300.

Councilmember Shetler: I think that’s an investment worth looking at, and biting that bullet. Otherwise, we’re going to keep putting this off year after year, and keep piling up the $15,000. To me, it’s just not making sense.

Deloris Koch: I think, maybe, a kind of a longer term plan on making that transition would be a good idea to plan ahead.

Councilmember Kiefer: Deloris, if you’re open to it, I mean, I would be glad to reinitiate some meetings and we could look at a couple at either the Courthouse, the Old Courthouse or the Civic Center to come up with a plan, and we’ll just have to, like Councilman Shetler said, we would have to bite the bullet for this year if we did that.

Jeff Ahlers: I don’t know what the security is here in the Civic Center, so the Old Courthouse might be, because they have night classes, right?

Deloris Koch: –at our office. We use contract agencies outside to do those now. That’s not so much a concern these days.

Councilmember Kiefer: The thing about....it’s probably a discussion for another day, but I think the space that Dave Rector has available that that could be segregated because it has separate entrances, so, I mean, you could actually do something with that space and segregate it from the rest of the Civic Center. So, that way maybe it would eliminate the security issue, because they could close off access to the rest of the Civic Center. Because they have their own separate entrance. I mean, that’s a discussion for another day.

Councilmember Bassemier: I talked with Dave Rector yesterday, of course, he’s going to be here tomorrow, but he’s trying to get with the Commissioners as we speak to set up another meeting to talk with us to try to see what we can do with the old jail and other entities that’s outside the, like her office, and try to bring them inside. So, he’s, and we can ask him tomorrow, he’ll be here.

President Lloyd: That was going to be my question, is, it’s the Commissioners are the ones that sign the rent contract? Or do you know?

Deloris Koch: No, I don’t think the Commissioners signed it. We, I signed it–

Deloris Koch: Right now we’re going on a month-to-month agreement on the previous lease.

Deloris Koch: They haven’t indicated any thinking that they might increase anything at this point.

President Lloyd: Okay, well, we, I think, Mr. Kiefer and Mr. Bassemier, if you guys could work on that. Obviously, the Commissioners are the operational head on this.

Councilmember Shetler: In the meantime, I would like to see us, if we can, hold off on signing, making any kind of an agreement on that until we get this resolved.

Deloris Koch: Sure. Now, that’s, essentially, we’re just going month-to-month at this point.

President Lloyd: I think that sounds great. Any other questions for Drug and Alcohol Deferral? Okay, thank you, Ms. Koch. We appreciate it.

President Lloyd: Next on our list is 1240, Area Plan Commission. I believe that was considered at the joint hearing. Any cuts we make will be September 1.

President Lloyd: Next on our list, 1060, Surveyor, page 34. Welcome, Mr. Bill Jeffers.

Bill Jeffers: Thank you, President Lloyd. Bill Jeffers, Vanderburgh County Surveyor. I’m not proud of this budget submittal. I would have liked to give my employees a small raise. I don’t see any decrease in the cost of living. When I go shopping I don’t see any decrease in the cost of groceries. Those of us who have grandchildren are, as you probably all know and realize whether you have them or not, we’re helping our kids and our grandchildren because they’re in the same boat as the rest of folks today, without, you know, seeing any raises at their jobs, and seeing the increased costs of groceries, etcetera. So, I’m not proud of it, but there it is. I was asked to submit it same as 2009, same as 2010, no increases in two years. That’s what I did, except for 1060-1130, a PAT IV, step four increase, which is automatic the first of the year, and, that’s Party Chief, and 1060-1150, Rod Man, PAT II, step three increase automatic at the first of the year. That’s my only two changes other than FICA and PERF, everything else remains the same. Again, I’m not proud of it, it’s not a very creative budget submittal, but it was as requested, and I understand the necessity.

President Lloyd: Well, and we haven’t completely shut the door on a pay increase. We’re still looking at that. If we can find ways to cut enough out of the budget, I mean, I think everyone on Council would like to see that.

Bill Jeffers: Sure. I’m not speaking just for myself, I know every office holder, including those on the Council feel the same way. I just made the statement.

President Lloyd: Right, and, I mean, I can appreciate that, and I know we would all like to see that, and, hopefully, we can come up with something. Any questions for the Surveyor on this budget, the Surveyor’s budget? Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Not really a question, just to bring up a point. I’m thinking, I might be incorrect on this, but, you know, the county does do the step increases so that they do get some kind of pay increase every so often. I don’t think the city does anything on a longevity whatsoever on some kind of step increases that I’m aware of. But, again, I’m not–

President Lloyd: Then, again, the labor contracts, they do have some step increases–

President Lloyd: –but the non-labor, or the non-union employees, I don’t believe they have that.

Councilmember Shetler: Right. So, that might be an area, and, I don’t know, since you’re standing here and you brought the question up, that could be looked at maybe in the future as some kind of a trade off there of using, utilizing the money that is going for that to increase salaries across the board. I’m not suggesting that. I’m bringing it on the table and asking you as an officeholder, since you brought up the subject, if you feel like that might be something...and I’m hitting you with (Inaudible).

Bill Jeffers: I think the county has a great system of government, has good structure. As an officeholder I appreciate what the County Council has done with their step increase program for county workers, and I certainly hope that if a merger of the two entities takes place that our pay increase system prevails over the city’s pay increase system. Or that the blending of the two benefits the workers, the workforce in the most beneficial way. That’s not up to me, that’s up to you guys and the Metro Council if it ever comes to be. I just wish we could give our workers, our employees an increase that would reflect their true cost of living increase year to year, but that’s apparently not in our hands to do. That has a lot to do with State policy, State taxing policy.

President Lloyd: Any other questions on the Surveyor’s budget? Okay, we’ll move on to Surveyor’s Perpetual Fund, which is page 148.

Bill Jeffers: In the Perpetuation Fund, those monies are collected through the Recorder’s Office, the County Recorder’s Office. When she records a deed, five dollars for each deed goes into the Corner Perpetuation Fund, and by law, by Indiana statute, that’s intended to be used to recover, remonument and perpetuate the section corner monuments that were laid down by the Congressional surveyors in the early 1800's. Every deed in the county, every parcel of property is tied to one of those section corners, so that’s the purpose of that. We’re required to recover and document five percent a year, but we do way more than that, according to our statute. We also, in addition to that, identify them on a GIS mapping system that’s open to everyone in the public, including private surveyors and engineers to utilize our data for longitude, latitude and elevation above sea level. That saves the citizens a lot of money, because that does, that gives them a point to start their surveys. That’s the purpose of it, but I don’t know how long we can maintain this budget, considering that land transfers are, you know, down. That used to get $40,000-$50,000 a year, five dollars per deed transfer, but today we don’t get that type of income. We’re doing the best we can. I would only say that we’ve submitted this budget, we don’t always spend everything in every line. Anything we don’t spend reverts back to that fund and can only come back out to be spent for this purpose. It can’t be transferred anywhere else outside of this program. So, we simply submit the same budget we submitted in 2009 and 2010, except for Dues and Subscriptions, which, I believe, we transferred everything in our office under Dues and Subscriptions over to line 3700, because almost everything we use in our office is tied to this program, GIS and AutoCad subscriptions, that type of thing. So, we are saving the General Fund that $4,150. That’s an insignificant amount in the overall scheme of things, but that’s what we did last year.

Bill Jeffers: I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head, but it was down to around, I believe, $26,000, from a high of maybe $42,000-$45,000 during the housing boom.

Bill Jeffers: I can’t give you that answer. I would have to consult with the County Auditor to get that figure. I can e-mail it to you.

Bill Jeffers: We used to get a running figure from the County Recorder every quarter or so. I haven’t seen that recently. So, I can’t give it to you off the top of my head.

President Lloyd: But, in, I guess, typically, like you said, because of the activity of the deed transfers and home building–

President Lloyd: Yeah, then, in ‘09 it plunged, or maybe even ‘08 it plunged to about $26,000, or something like that.

Bill Jeffers: Around that, yes, sir. And, that’s why we only pay the Assistant to the Surveyor, that would be 2650 up there–

Bill Jeffers: –we’re only paying half of that salary out of this fund, we used to pay the entire amount. We’re not able to do that any longer. So, we’re paying, I believe, $22,000 out of General, and $20,000 out of this fund.

Bill Jeffers: I believe it costs around $17 to record a deed, a certain amount of it goes to the Recorder, which supports that program, and then five dollars comes to this account here for each deed.

President Lloyd: It would be interesting to see the year-to-date. Did you have a question, Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: Just a quick question. Bill, how many section corners do we have in this county?

Bill Jeffers: That’s theoretic. I’m sure there’s some out in the middle of the Ohio River we’ll never find, but that’s what we’re supposed to have.

President Lloyd: Other questions on this? Anyway, we’ll look at that year-to-date. I mean, hopefully, with the economy recovering that will move up.

Bill Jeffers: Then, our Map Fund, those are simply, that’s just simply money we collect or take from the General Fund to operate, buy paper supplies–

Bill Jeffers: –ink pen cartridges for our plotter, that type of thing. We have radio and pagers in there, but we don’t use those anymore. We just call someone’s cell phone in the field. So, that’s zero now. Basically, we’re just producing maps upon request. They may be district maps for the voting districts, they may be maps for the County Sheriff for his motor patrol. I’m trying to create a book for him. Citizens come in and ask for maps, we charge them so much per map and then that goes back into the fund.

Bill Jeffers: Of course, what we might do for the Sheriff or the Voters Registration, that doesn’t get charged. So, we do have to ask for some money occasionally, but we try to be self sustaining. It’s kind of hard.

President Lloyd: Isn’t this another fund that State law says that you have to have a Map Fund?

Bill Jeffers: Supposedly the only two government offices who can issue an official map are the County Surveyor and Area Plan Commission. Now, GIS Department does produce maps in conjunction with both of those departments, and they’re very helpful and produce high quality maps, but they’re supposed to be issued, supposedly, through the County Surveyor or the Area Plan Commission only. So, we work together with both of those agencies, GIS, APC and the County Surveyor try to work closely together to make sure the maps all coincide with one another.

President Lloyd: I guess, legally, a legal map, those would be the only two agencies that issue a legal map?

President Lloyd: Right. Questions on the Map Fund? Okay, Mr. Jeffers, thank you very much.

President Lloyd: We’ll move on to Convention and Visitors Bureau, page 157, budget item 3570.

Bob Whitehouse: Good morning, President Lloyd, members. I’m Bob Whitehouse, the Interim Director for the Evansville Convention and Visitors Bureau. We would open by saying that we’re having a better year than what I think we had anticipated last year, due to a lot of diversity in the accounts that we’ve been bringing in to Evansville. The revenue stream has not decreased as we thought it might, according to the Smith Travel Research, which is the people that we use to track us. We’re actually up for a number of reasons, and that is that, I think, the economy in Evansville seems to be a little stronger than it might be in other areas that we track in comparison to us, and that our partners in the Hotel/Motel Association are doing an outstanding job this year of continuing to bring in the diversity of accounts that we have.

Councilmember Kiefer: Bob, first I would like to comment and say nice picture in the paper in the other day.

Councilmember Kiefer: What I was going to ask is, the Director’s salary, do you anticipate that you’re going to be able to fill that position with that level of salary?

Bob Whitehouse: On that question I would have to say that the board hasn’t shared that information with me.

Councilmember Kiefer: Okay. Any, so, they haven’t shared with you like how long it might take them to fill the position?

Bob Whitehouse: I know it’s ongoing right now, that they’re on a search, and that they’re continuing to look for someone. It’s a nationwide search. They’re utilizing SearchWide, Incorporated, and it’s ongoing.

Councilmember Kiefer: Okay, I was just curious, because, you know, if it takes six months, well, obviously, that’s going to save us some money, but it might hurt us too getting new business into the area. But, also, I would be curious to just know if it’s going to be able to get the job done at that price, or if it’s going to take $100,000, or maybe it gets done less than that too.

Bob Whitehouse: The committee is David Dunn and Kristen Tucker and Stacey’s in charge of it.

Councilmember Bassemier: Mr. Whitehouse, I was curious, on the six months expended, you know, you’ve got zeroes, why isn’t that put in what you’ve spent so far? Now, this is in the blue book. You know, everybody else has got their expenditures for six months and yours is all...I was just wondering why that’s not put in there. I was just curious, I mean, it’s not that big of a deal to me, but–

Bob Whitehouse: Councilman, I don’t know, I’m, again, in the dark on that. This is prepared primarily by the board, and I was asked to present it. I can get back with you.

Councilmember Bassemier: I would appreciate that, because that’s important, if you’ve got, you know, if you spent $15,000 and–

Bill Fluty: Ed, you might not remember this, but, actually, their expenditures are within their own budget.

Bill Fluty: This, all we have is what we budgeted for them last year. They, normally have provided in the past what their expenditures are. This is produced out of our software system and their expenses are not in there.

Bill Fluty: So, it’s not something you’ll ever, have ever seen in this actual budget book.

Councilmember Bassemier: I was thinking one other time we did see that. So, I guess, we had to request that if we want to see it.

Councilmember Raben: I don’t think we see the airport’s expenditures, believe it or not.

Councilmember Bassemier: But, you guys ask for it. You guys ask for it in time you can get that.

Councilmember Shetler: I noticed recently in the news media that, I guess, there’s been a law suit filed on an appointment issue and stuff. Do you know if the $18,000, first of all, if the $18,000 for Legal Services is going to be adequate to help defend that suit? Secondly, in here it doesn’t appear to be, but any kind of reserve fund set up in case they would have a negative result on the case?

Bob Whitehouse: Once again, I hate to go back to that, but they haven’t shared any of that information with me. I do know that they have insurance on that, the directors and all, but, they haven’t shared what the cost is or how that is proceeding at all right now.

Councilmember Kiefer: Follow up question to Councilman Shetler, can you ask, since you don’t have the information, could you ask whoever the appropriate people are that make a report to us–

Councilmember Kiefer: –because I would be interested to know the answer to his question. Then, also, how they are doing on the search for the new Executive Director.

President Lloyd: Other questions for Mr. Whitehouse? I guess, to finish what you had stated earlier, you said revenues are up for oh 10, roughly how much? Or, what percentage?

Bob Whitehouse: Right now about two to three percent, about 2.8 percent. A lot of that, you know, what has happened when the Smith Travel Research comes out, what they do is compare apples to apples because they’ve taken out the extra rooms that the Executive Inn had, we’re now down to in the neighborhood of 2,800 total rooms to sell and those figures are off of the 2,800. We’ve been able to maintain a lot of the accounts, we have a lot of repeat accounts, and that’s the backbone of the industry.

President Lloyd: As of right now, not having a convention hotel, that’s still not being seen by you guys? Or, it’s, or do you have any comment on that?

Bob Whitehouse: I mean, obviously, it would be a tremendous asset for us. There’s a number, I just came back from a trade show in Louisville and it’s a question that is being asked. Right now most of the meeting planners that I meet with are putting out RFP’s for 2013 and 2014. So, in anticipation of that, we’re cautiously going forward.

President Lloyd: Okay, so a lot of planners are working on 2013 and 2014, and we don’t have a time table at this point. Although, I think it’s something that we’ve asked the Mayor and the Redevelopment Commission, we need that. Any other questions? Okay, we’ll move on to 3600, Tourism Capital Improvement, page 160.

Bob Whitehouse: We have only two obligations and those are to the museum for 2010 and 2011. A total of $350,000 for 2011 and $400,000 for 2010. Both of those will be paid commensurate with the time that they start their actual construction of the museum expansion and that they have raised the funds needed to go ahead. Other than that, all of the money will be put aside for the projection on the park and ball fields.

President Lloyd: Right. It’s, I know, we had Mr. Dunn with the, gave us a lengthy presentation on the ball fields, but the funding of the Innkeepers is approximately $1.2 million a year, something along those lines. But, anyway, this is the distribution in prior years. So, you’re saying the only commitments you have, is it $300,000 in two separate years to the museum?

Bob Whitehouse: It was $400,000 for this year, in the 2010 budget, and in the 2011 budget has $350,000 set aside. Other than those two commitments, everything will be dedicated to the ball fields.

President Lloyd: And, those are both the museum capital improvement, the Evansville Museum.

Councilmember Goebel: Do you know when the projected start time will be for the renovation of the museum? Are they pretty close on their funding drive?

Bob Whitehouse: I know that Mr. Vezosso, the president has met with Rita Eykamp, and they’ve gone over that, but as to an exact date, no, sir, I don’t.

President Lloyd: Other questions of Tourism Capital Improvement? This is Innkeepers Tax, correct, Jim? Right. Food and Beverage is the one dedicated to the Vanderburgh Auditorium and Convention Centre.

President Lloyd: Thanks, Bob. We’re going to take a break before we get into the Sheriff. That will be lengthy. So, ten minutes, come back at approximately 25 after.

President Lloyd: I would like to reconvene the Vanderburgh County budget hearings 2011. Next on our list would be department 1050, the Sheriff, and that’s on page 14.

Eric Williams: Not that I’m going to use it, but I ought to just have it open.

President Lloyd: Okay, we have our Sheriff here, did you have any items to note before we start with questions?

Eric Williams: I guess, I could start off by saying Clerk Kirk and the judge were correct, and I will be the broken record that we are in a booming business, and business is up right now. When we get to the jail’s budget I have some current jail numbers for you just to give you some ideas of what the numbers are looking like in the jail. But, I think, in all respects, for the most part, my budget is relatively flat. There were some increases, and those increases are really reflective of asking for the same numbers that I asked for last year prior to them being cut. So, I’m asking for the same thing, not exactly what I got. There’s the two employees that are in there, which I figure will be the bulk of the line of questions. But, I would just, I would prefer, if you don’t mind, to just answer your questions.

President Lloyd: Questions for the Sheriff? Mr. Bassemier, did you have a question?

President Lloyd: Okay, I guess I can start. Any increases are mainly step increases?

Eric Williams: All of the personnel increases will be related to longevity increases, those kinds of things, other than the two deputies that are in there.

President Lloyd: Right, on page 20 we’ve got a request for two new deputies. If you wanted to explain that.

Eric Williams: Sure. That is in response to what we’re going to be dealing with starting next year and then in full force the following year, which is the new North High School which is being constructed at Baseline and 41. That is a new entity for the Sheriff’s Office, we have not had a high school in our primary law enforcement response jurisdiction for as long as I can remember. There may have been one way back in history before annexation, Harrison’s may have been originally, I don’t know. But, that’s going to change how we handle things out there. It’s my belief that I would like to have a full time presence in that school, at all times, during their open hours, a school resource officer, a high school of that size. Just to give you some ideas, and I’ve gotten most of this from the EVSC, the junior high on that campus is scheduled to open in August 2011 with an estimated student enrollment of 776. The high school is scheduled to open in January of 2012 with an estimation of 1,597 high school students when they open. They expect to have, I think there’s planned between 2,500 and 3,000 parking spaces on that campus, 275 staff and faculty on the campus at any given time, for a total of about 2,648 students and staff on that campus when school’s open, which makes it the biggest high school and junior high school in our community. They’re going to be way out into the county where we’re going to be the primary law enforcement response. So, my request is to hire two school resource officers, deputies to place into that school. I would have one in there on a full time basis, and the other one would be the back up for them on vacation days off. On the days off, or when the regular deputy is assigned in there, the other one would be taking care of the other school’s that are out in the county, which includes Scott, Oak Hill, Cynthia Heights, West Terrace, Perry Heights and the new North and then the Catholic schools that are in the county would be Resurrection, Corpus Christi and St. Joe in the county, then we also have Evansville Day School in our jurisdiction. Based on our estimates right now, that means when all of those schools are in operation, there’s going to be about 6,200 students out in the county receiving their primary law enforcement/crime prevention services from the Sheriff’s Office. That is basically the crux of my request for those two persons so I can basically implement and start a school resource/school liaison program for those schools out in the county. We’ve been very fortunate, we’ve been able to handle that with patrol personnel, detectives, just kind of taking it on a shift basis, or as needed basis, but we’re to the point now where we really need to have some continuity in service for those people.

Eric Williams: On that campus, the new North Middle School, from the EVSC they’re estimating 776, which to give it a comparison, the two other junior highs out in the, or the other junior high that will be out in the county, Perry Heights, is estimated to be about 459. Scott will drop because of that change, they’ll have about 658, Oak Hill 658, Cynthia Heights 541, West Terrace 545, Resurrection 377, Corpus Christi 187, and St. Joseph 139. Again, those are projected estimates.

Councilmember Goebel: I was wondering if you could be a little more exact on those school populations for us?

Councilmember Goebel: Thank you. As far as school liaison, is this basically the same plan as the EPD has with the city schools? Or the schools inside the city?

Eric Williams: I would call it similar in nature. We’re going to take a little different approach than they have, but, basically the concept is to have full time law enforcement in that high school so that there’s a continuity of service, a go to person inside the school for the incidents and activities that occur, but, more importantly to just begin to build rapport and relationships with the student bodies in there so that we can be ahead of the curve and know when problems are developing and be able to work in concert with the staff and faculty out there to keep things from getting out of hand. One of the keys to that is having the same go to person there all the time, as opposed to having rotating people, a different guy every day, because you can’t build that relationship if it’s a different person every day.

Councilmember Goebel: Will these two deputies handle traffic and things like that before and after school?

Eric Williams: I think they will be available to do that. They’re going to be on that campus and be able to do just about everything, but I would guess that in the initial stages of this facility opening up, based on their traffic patterns and how it looks out there, we’re going to spend a lot of time out there as an agency.

Eric Williams: EVSC says they plan to open for the fall of August 2011, this following year for the junior high, and then for the, January of 2012 for the high school is their current plan right now. That’s what I got from them in the last few days.

President Lloyd: So, technically, you wouldn’t necessarily need these people until the very end of the year, or even 2012?

Eric Williams: Correct, technically, to have them active, the problem that I have is I’ve got a year of probation with a Deputy Sheriff. I’ve got academy, and we would like to begin selecting the people so we can get them into some specialized training in dealing with high school and middle school law enforcement/crime prevention and youth resource. But, no, as far as putting them on line in those schools right away, no, it wouldn’t occur until those dates, but we would have some lead time to make it happen.

Councilmember Shetler: –Custodian of what? Which building, which facility, all of the facilities?

Eric Williams: Basically the Command Post. That’s the one that we handle ourselves. Obviously, the Building Authority takes care of the jail and the administration. That Custodian also ventures over to the Training Center periodically, but her primary responsibility is the Command Post.

Councilmember Shetler: –that’s....okay, and then the Grounds Keeper, which is 220, 212, I think it was, up a little bit further, yeah, twenty eight and change.

Eric Williams: That’s a person, that person is assigned to the Training Center. They do maintenance on the Training Center, cut the grass, keep it trimmed, take care of the firing range. That person has some added responsibilities, helps at the Command Post in document movement, when we, that’s where we store a lot of records and evidence. But, the other thing that they also help with is the fleet maintenance. We try to do a lot of our stuff in house as far as repairs, wiring, the things that don’t require a mechanic or somebody that’s specialized. That person does a lot of those things also.

Councilmember Shetler: I noticed in here on Vehicles you have $300,000, how old is the fleet getting to be?

Eric Williams: Actually our fleet’s in fairly good shape. I’m fairly proud of the way it’s looking right now. The reason that it has been maintained is because we’ve had a good program with the Council of replacing approximately nine to eleven cars, based on cost, prices and what we can cannibalize from old vehicles on an annual basis. So, we’re kind of keeping it turned over and getting out of that practice of having 30 or 40 cars bought, or 20 here and then none for a few years, and having that smaller amount has truly made a difference. I actually think the fleet’s in great shape. The fleet we’re being able to maintain a little better and the vehicles are lasting longer.

Eric Williams: The average, I would say the average, and this is not a quote, I would have to get you the actual stats, but I would say the average age of a vehicle in our fleet right now is between four and five years. Most of the fleet vehicles are lasting probably eight years.

Councilmember Shetler: Okay, and mileage in that period of time? Do you have a rough idea, just an average?

Eric Williams: You know, it just depends, but most of our fleet probably, if I averaged the fleet out, there’s probably between 80,000 and 100,000 miles on the average vehicle.

Councilmember Shetler: As it goes out of service? Or would you have it currently?

Eric Williams: No, at the average. They are far higher than that when they go out of service.

Councilmember Shetler: At the end, okay. One area, could you maybe explain, Overtime–

Eric Williams: The vast majority of merit overtime comes from holiday pay, court time, and then late runs. Those are the ones that are kind of out of our control for the most places. A late run would be a Deputy Sheriff takes a run, you know, his shift ends at 2:00, gets a crash at 1:30 and is the primary, he’s going to work that until at least he can close up the reports and go home. So, there’s going to be some comp time that develops there. Now, our process to, we don’t pay on the fly, we use comp time, everybody gets comp time, then we go to 80 hours and when you break the 80 hours threshold of accrued comp time, to avoid those comp time banks from getting unmanageable, we automatically pay you back 40 with these funds. It allows us to stage and predict where we’re going with our comp time, plus it allows the employee to help self manage. If you’re an employee that likes to have a little extra cushion in your comp time bank for whatever may come up, you know that when you get to 80 we’re going to pay you back the 40, there’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. So, if you’re getting in the 70's, you start to be a little more aggressive, looking for some opportunities to take some of that comp time back off so we don’t pay it out. I think it’s been fairly successful in allowing the employee to help us self manage those comp time bank accruals. Because one of the things that we ran into trouble several years ago was getting these very large comp banks built up, which are really just an unfunded liability that’s hanging out there for us. So, this system has worked very well.

Eric Williams: For example, the marathon that was run. We funded that out of that, but then we since totaled all of those costs up, worked a contract out with the Commissioners, verified all of the fees and we billed them back for every dollar that was spent and put that back into the General Find.

Eric Williams: The people that put on the marathon, they paid those costs. But, so, it was really just a–

Eric Williams: –washed through it. But, as far as special events that generate overtime, there aren’t any real significant ones for us. The 4-H Fair really doesn’t, the Frog Follies really don’t. We, you know, major events that were unexpected are generally where the overtime would come from, but I would venture that the vast majority is from holiday and those kinds of pay, holiday pay.

President Lloyd: Other questions for the Sheriff? Let me throw a couple out here.

President Lloyd: When we’re looking at the two new deputies for the new high school–

President Lloyd: –do you, you guys are probably out at Scott School every day, aren’t you, because of the traffic situation, or not?

Eric Williams: We spend time out there. Once, you know, the first start of the year we put a lot of resources into all of the schools out in the county to get everybody adjusted to the traffic patterns. Every year one of the schools changes their in and out directions and the parking directions and it takes a while for parents to get used to that, but we try to monitor them, but as far as spending time out there on a daily basis, probably not just for traffic. We know that the day shift in the morning they try to hover around the schools as they do in the afternoon, but after the first few weeks we’re not out there every single day, unless there’s a problem.

President Lloyd: Because there are a lot of traffic accidents or violations, or not violations, but anyway, incidents out there?

Eric Williams: It’s a problematic school in as much that it’s such a growth out there and they’ve taken up a lot of the parking, and a lot of the traffic that flows into that subdivision in behind Scott and creates gridlock more often than anything else. As far as major crashes, you know, we have a few fender benders out there, but we’ve been very fortunate. Now, obviously, Old State Road there is pretty wide open, and if you’re not paying attention, you can come up on Scott fairly quickly. We have some speeding problems, but we spend, our traffic enforcement guys spend quite a bit of time in the school zones out there. I hear the complaints from the people that they meet.

President Lloyd: Is there any other school in the county that has more, I guess, more work or hours that you guys have to put in than Scott?

Eric Williams: Cynthia Heights because of its location on 65, you know, there’s some traffic issues there. Resurrection sometimes creates issues because of the weird traffic patterns around that school, you know, because it kind of lays in that little quadrant between 65 and New Harmony Road and short 65 there. So, that causes some problems for us. You know, probably the easiest school for us to deal with is West Terrace, because it’s kind of off by itself. Day School does create problems, just because of Green River Road, but it’s a small enough school and they don’t create huge problems, for a few days it will be a problem, but, you know, it’s located right there at the corner of North Green River Road and Lynch. The traffic pattern out there is constantly evolving with the growth anyway. So, it’s, that area in general is just in a constant state of issues.

President Lloyd: The, you know, we know the city did some annexation on the east side and north side–

President Lloyd: – so, I just wonder did you look at the possibility to cover the new North High School, reassigning deputies instead of adding two new ones?

Eric Williams: Yeah, we’ve explored that, and kind of like when we had our last conversation about that, I’ve pledged to the high school I’m going to do whatever it takes to get people out there, if I have to come up with some other plan. I’m looking to you for help first. That’s my first resource. I think that we have an obligation to those kids to be out there and be visible and do those things. When I looked at the annexation, the way I described that is that they really didn’t annex all that much when it comes to volume of calls. They annexed some businesses, they annexed some crashes and some shoplifters–

Eric Williams: –but they didn’t annex really any (inaudible). They left us with a peninsula going through the eastern part of the county where we’re still in and out of there anyways. My guys are still making runs, or at least standbys, because, you know, it’s my direction to my people, I don’t care whether you’re in the city limits or outside the city limits, it’s all Vanderburgh County, the city is in the county, and if you’re driving down Burkhardt Road, regardless of whether it’s been annexed or not and there’s a crash right in front of you or a citizen needs help, you’re going to stop and deal with that problem. It’s not one of those, well, it’s the city I’m going to drive on by. That’s not how we operate. I would tell you that with the growth, and I think the number that I gave you and I’ve got it here again from 2000 to 2008, the county’s calls for service have increased by 47 percent. So, we’re seeing mass increases in our activity with no increase in staff. We are trying to operate more efficiently, effectively and do those things, but as we see that growth in the northern part of the county, and I can’t help but imagine that things like the Baseline overpass, a new North High School out there is going to do nothing but fuel the growth and the activity in that part of the county, which is a long way away from anything the city might be about annexing. Now, obviously–

Eric Williams: –I’ll go on and state this, because I’m surprised it hasn’t been asked yet, I think this issue is one of those kind of leads us down the path of, you know, what about the consolidation issue between the law enforcement agencies. Obviously, the Evansville Police Department is losing a North High School, but I don’t, those aren’t my people, I’m gaining the responsibility of a North High School and those people aren’t lateral between the two agencies at this point in time. So, you know, in a consolidated agency that may not be the same issue.

President Lloyd: You said the forty percent increase in service calls was over what period?

Eric Williams: Between 2000 and 2008. They haven’t given me the 2009 stats yet out at dispatch, but I expect them to be on the same trend.

President Lloyd: Okay, but you’re right, you’ve got Knight Township south and that is–

Eric Williams: You know, where the modular housing is there, and there’s a lot of activity and growth in that part of the county right now. It is busier. Then we look at some of the major developments in our county, they’re fairly far north, Keystone being one, Cambridge being one, there’s lots and lots of development around the campus at USI which we’re responsible for, and those are all, you know, I hate to say this, but the cornfields didn’t call 911, but the houses are, and that’s what we’re replacing, houses where cornfields used to be.

President Lloyd: I was going to say that Knight Township area is in my Council district too, by the way. Go ahead, Jim.

Councilmember Raben: Before we get out of this part of the discussion, you know, we mentioned the number of runs and what have you at Scott as it is today, you have to remember that at Scott the kids don’t drive. You know, it’s a parent, it’s an adult, or they’re on a bus. You know, when you start bringing a thousand plus 16 year old new drivers and young drivers crossing a lot of scary intersections. I mean, it’s a frightening thought that they’re going to be pulling on and off of Highway 41 twice a day, and for most of them, traveling a lot of new roads. So, I, you know, it’s a serious matter. It’s going to be a serious matter, and it doesn’t go away. You get a new young driver each year for the first time driving to North High School.

Eric Williams: It is very similar to the, every school that has kindergartens we get a lot of new kindergarten parent drivers into schools, and those are really parents that we have to spend a little time getting them educated to the traffic...you know, they figure it out and get it. I expect the students will too, but this is all new terrain, all new area, new intersections, new traffic patterns, and a lot of change in that...this is just the tip of the iceberg for that part of our community.

Councilmember Raben: I don’t know that we’ve got another school crossing or school district with 20,000 to 30,000 trucks a day traveling across the front of, you know, through the intersections these kids are going to be traveling through.

Eric Williams: One of the disadvantages of that, because I think that’s an important aspect as we look at traffic patterns in that area, is, at least in the schools that are kind of near 41, further into the city, traffic has been broken up by repeated stop lights. The first stop light they’re going to hit at Baseline Road is the first one after they have been at speed for a period of time. So, we are going to have a lot of traffic concerns and issues, and we are going to spend a considerable amount of time out there trying to make, get everybody educated and get people in and out of that school as safely as we possibly can. Plus, we’re also going to be adding, you know, they’re obviously building a football stadium and all of the athletic events, so, we’re talking about events that didn’t used to occur out there with people from lots of other communities coming to that part of our community now at all hours doing lots of...it is just going to be a major change in the way Scott Township looks. I would much rather be prepared for it than try to react to it.

Councilmember Shetler: Have you explored the possibility of doing contractual services outside, to do those activities?

Councilmember Shetler: With some kind of private service on the janitorial services or–

Councilmember Shetler: No, no, no. I’m sorry, no, not the Deputies, no. I’m going back to my original two people.

Eric Williams: No, we’ve not explored that, per se. I think there’s probably an opportunity to look at those two positions. I think that, with attrition that we can probably do something with those a little differently. They both work hard. They both get a lot done. I’m proud of the Command Post and the cleanliness and the upkeep and that. I mean, that’s our responsibility and that person does a great job, but I think there is opportunities.

Councilmember Shetler: Are those personalities, those people that are in there, are they capable of moving someplace else in the department if a vacancy should occur?

Eric Williams: They’re both very capable for the jobs for which they were hired.

Eric Williams: To assess somebody in our, and this is one of the dilemmas we face within our agency a lot. We get people in one assignment, we hire them for one job–

Eric Williams: – but then an opening comes up and they want to slide into that job because they’ve been a long term county employee, but somebody I hire to be a Clerk/Typist and answer the phones and file records, is not necessarily the best suited to be in one of the housing units guarding prisoners.

Councilmember Shetler: –very well. The, is it possible to explore the possibility of what it may cost to have that contracted out?

Eric Williams: Sure. I’ll be glad to look at it and get some quotes and some ideas from some of the local companies that provide those services to give you a comparative to provide kind of the same services, where that would put us. Probably we could do a time study on the one at the Training Center and look at how much of the time is actually being spent doing fleet maintenance that we could compare to what the garage costs us as compared to what he’s costing us and the other services.

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah. I’m generally not necessarily in favor or privatizing–

Councilmember Shetler: –but I think in those two situations, since they’re unique in that it may be possible that there could be some cost savings there by the time we add on all of the fringes and everything to it.

Eric Williams: And, I would throw out too the idea that, you know, it may be another opportunity, because I know the city has done a lot of this in contracting with the Building Authority to take on some of their outlying buildings to do the maintenance and custodial work on those, even though they’re not actually owned by the Building Authority, that maybe at least the Command Post may be an opportunity for something like that. I would be happy to talk to Dave Rector about that and see what his thoughts are.

President Lloyd: Other questions? Just, I think this is a perpetual question, I know Councilman Curt Wortman, a former member of this body, he was proud of that Command Post out there, I think probably a question that I always ask is that something that could be moved? I mean, what is the advantage to having that right across the street from the jail?

Eric Williams: Good question, and I think we’ve answered this a couple of times, but I think it’s important for people to hear. With the right facility you could move it. There is no magic about that specific location, other than it’s very good for our community that coming in on the 41 corridor one of the first things you see is a big Sheriff’s star as a place to get help and look for assistance on the side of 41. It’s easy to describe people to get to. It’s fairly centrally located for me to disperse manpower into the county. Beyond that, what the jail, we’re located right across the street, it would beg the question, well, it’s not that far away. There is no space currently in the jail that is conducive to what we do. If we had constructed the jail a little differently, or we could basically pick the Command Post up and attach it to the jail and have separate entrances and those kinds of things, I don’t know that you couldn’t do that. I think we have a lease that’s good for several years left on the Command Post. We explored those options as we prepared to renew the lease to negotiate a better deal with the Airport, but one of the big concerns is having a location that is on the same campus with your jail, is the same place that you keep all of your law enforcement. A couple of reasons, number one, that’s where you keep weapons, ammunition, and things like that and we have very little of that around the jail for obvious reasons, and another thing is it’s separate entrances. One of the things you don’t want to ever have happen is have the victims of a crime that are coming in to work with your law enforcement people, your detectives and investigators of a crime scene come in and sit in the same lobby with the family, friends and visitors of the inmates that are in jail, and/or pass each other as somebody’s bonding out or being released. It sounds pretty simple, but separate entrances are pretty important when you’re talking about those two dynamics. We just don’t have that capability in this facility as it stands today. I absolutely think it’s always appropriate to be exploring that option though.

President Lloyd: The last question from me on this, are we in good shape on the Court Screeners as far as security in and out of this building?

Eric Williams: I think that it’s a lot better than it used to be, and it’s a long way from being perfect, but I don’t know that in a building like this, with the exceptions that we’ve been forced to make with the dynamics that occur in here that we’re ever going to have a perfect solution. But, I can tell you that they do a good job, they find lots of things that we wouldn’t have found historically coming into this building, even historically may not have been problematic, we don’t know, but we’re finding those things. I think people are becoming used to it, there’s a much better accountability of who comes and goes from this building, so we know who’s in and out here. I, quite frankly, I’ve gotten far more....I’ve gotten complaints, I’m not kidding anybody, but I’ve gotten far more compliments about it’s nice to know that we’re doing that, that people are being checked and people aren’t just coming in here free will, with whatever they may have on them. So, I’ve gotten more compliments, they feel better about going through that. And, as time has gone, I think the regular users of this facility have gotten very used to the system and can streamline through fairly quickly. We don’t see the big delays that we kind of expected and that occurred for the first 30 days. People have adapted very well.

President Lloyd: But, in this budget, the personnel to handle that security is sufficient?

Eric Williams: Yes, at this point in time I am not going to ask for any additional help in that area. I think that we’re doing fairly well. There’s scheduling issues, you know, when this building’s going to be open, there’s some last minute things that occur from time to time that cause us some problems, but so far we’ve been able to handle it.

Councilmember Raben: I just, to go back to the Rent, just to give those that maybe weren’t serving on the Council back when Bill Nix was President of the County Commissioners, he worked real close, I believe with the Sheriff on looking at moving the Command Post, and at the time, after his research, and that’s what he does, you know, that’s, his professional side of him is an engineer and what have you with Industrial Contractors. I think the estimate was in the millions, was it not, to –

Eric Williams: It was high enough that the lease at the Command Post became very, very attractive.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, and also at that same time, I think when the, when the Airport was somewhat served notice by the discussions on moving it, the Airport reduced our rental rate.

Councilmember Raben: Because they were concerned about the response time, if we’re on the other side of the tracks, should they need an emergency, or need, you know, assistance. I think that was also considered back then too, do we want all of our cars on that side of the railroad track if the tracks are blocked.

Councilmember Raben: So, just giving you a little brief history on where we’ve been on the sub-station.

Eric Williams: – they became a little bit more willing to work with us on that lease when we really were seriously looking at relocating.

President Lloyd: Then overall, for those that count numbers, the Sheriff budget plus $473,276, which is a five point six percent increase. Okay, we’ll move on to Sheriff/Jail, page 26.

Eric Williams: I can tell you that based on my records we have, in the last three days hit our high in this new facility. Two days ago we were at 572 in custody. You know, I could show you the report, but everyday you see a yellow that’s where we’re over capacity. This morning we were at, or last night our official total for last night was 564. You know, it’s crowded. As the Clerk said, and as the judge said, there’s a lot of things going on, and, you know, it’s kind of a vicious circle, the chicken or the egg, who knows, but when one of our work goes up, it usually is reflective on all of us. I’m not here asking for assistance in the facility at this point in time. I think that we’re able to sustain, while it’s tough on my people, you know, it was staffed and designed to be at capacity of 512 and when you add more people to that, not only are you adding more people to watch, but you’re adding more people in tighter areas where more problems occur. I plan to keep everybody in the loop on the jail population and how it continues, you know, whether it recedes a little bit or continues to move ahead. I may be back asking for assistance in there, but right now the advantage of the design of that facility is we are far, far more flexible than we were in the old facility. We’re able to be more creative when we’re crowded. We’re able to do some more things to help weather the storm, if that’s all it is, is a storm right now.

Councilmember Raben: The Civilian Uniform Allowance, Eric, is from $2,750 to $8,000?

Eric Williams: Hold on a second. Let me catch up to you. I’ve got them in my notes over here.

Eric Williams: I don’t know, that’s not what my numbers show. The addition of medical employees when they became part of the union. I think there is some latitude in that number though. I think that was our real budget number, but that’s one of the areas that, you know, we spend a lot of money, I can tell you that we spend a lot of money out of Commissary to cover the cost of uniforms so we’re not up here asking for it. But, that was the result of medical becoming unionized.

President Lloyd: Then, Clothing Allowance is up $9,000 to $69,000. The same thing?

Eric Williams: Well, it went from...I’m asking, it was $15,000 last year and I’m asking for $20,000. I asked for $20,000 last year, and you set it in at $15,000. So, I’m just asking for the same amount I asked for last year. Is that correct?

Eric Williams: But, that happens. I would love to have $20,000, but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get it.

Eric Williams: Now, it depends on which one you are talking about. We’ve got 1050-3310, Training, and then you’ve got 1051-3310, Training.

Eric Williams: Okay, then we got $5,000 last year and I’m okay with that again this year.

Councilmember Shetler: The, in your prison population, or not prison, but your inmate population what would you estimate the percentage might be of people who might have some kind of psychological issue or problem?

Eric Williams: As a measurable percentage, I think statistically if I told you that probably ten to fifteen percent at any given time have a significant emotional/mental issue to deal with, that would probably be a fair estimate. I would tell you that at any given time we estimate between 80 and 85 percent of the population there are for some addiction related reason. I think that experts would argue that those two are somewhat related in some respects. But, yes, again, you know, one of the things that I would love to have at some point in the future is a mental health worker in the facility to help start to gauge where people are at in the system and what the right recourse for them is, what avenues they might take when they get out, what public availability there is for mental health providers out in our community to get them in touch with them.

Councilmember Shetler: Now, let’s, let me just, just cause I’m asking the question here–

Councilmember Shetler: – okay, let’s suppose that we, you know, invest in that and then let’s say that a trained person determines that there’s an obvious psychological issue here, and that rather than being incarcerated into the jail, that it be far better for them to be taken to some other facility that actually deals more specifically with a psychological problem, would that not relieve then, perhaps, the county of having to pay the expense of the incarceration? And, would then, if they are on some kind of Social Security/Disabilities or anything of that nature, would it not be absorbed through Social Security?

Eric Williams: I think in the picture you’ve painted theoretically, yes, there are opportunities there. I think that the problem that we come up with is if they’re in jail they’re there for some criminal charge. So, we’ve also got the courts aspect of it of deciding that we’re prepared to release them from this and move them to some other facility and let them get the treatment they need and not deal with the criminal charge. I think that’s one of the problems that we continually fight there is that you’ve got individuals there in the facility that need mental help but they’ve committed a crime. They need some kind of mental health assistance or counseling, training, medication, whatever, but on the street they’ve been accused of a crime, so, the system is holding them accountable for that crime and not treating them for the mental health issue that’s in place.

Councilmember Shetler: So, in some respects, I mean, not only would we be doing a better service to that person who’s been incarcerated for a period of time, but we also might be getting them the help they really do need, directly, you know, the psychological services, and could be saving the county perhaps some money in the long run, because the burden financially would be shifted off of local to the federal, which I know we’re still all taxpayers at that level, but, I mean, it is there for that reason, and it’s–

Eric Williams: I think theoretically that that makes some sense. I think there are opportunities there. I would like to have the mental health professional in my facility just to help make the facility run smoother. So, that we are providing the counseling and the treatment while they’re in our facility to make it run smoother. I couldn’t pledge to you that that would create any savings, but it would make for a more efficient and a better facility to operate in how we deal with the people that are in there. You would like to think that it might make for a better facility down the road. It’s kind of like the basic health care, my recidivism rate in this county is about 66 percent. You know, two out of every three that get booked have been there before. So, if I can make them a healthier inmate, they may not recidivate. We may get to the problem and keep them from coming back. They may come back, but they may be in better shape and cost us less in medical money the next time. It sounds kind of ridiculous to say that, but, you know, if I at least get a healthier inmate it’s going to cost me less.

President Lloyd: Other questions on the jail? The total increase on the jail budget, $124,108, which is two point six percent. Reasonable.

President Lloyd: Okay, let’s go on to Sheriff Domestic Violence, page 33. It’s only one line.

Eric Williams: It’s money from the State from their required....they divide up a pool of money every year between all of the counties to...it came about when they quit taking misdemeanents into the prison system and forced counties to keep misdemeanents as opposed to sending them to the Department of Corrections. That’s their way of back funding some of that. It’s not a parity for what the cost is, but it’s what the State provides.

President Lloyd: Okay, we’ll move on to Community Corrections, 1361, which is on page 86. Sheriff Community Corrections, any questions for the Sheriff? This one, the overall budget is up a small amount, $21,254, which is one point four percent. It looks like no employment changes other than step increases.

Eric Williams: I would venture to guess that that whole entire percentage is related to that.

President Lloyd: Oh, it’s grant money. Okay. Segregated for the grant and it went up about $1,900. Any questions on Misdemeanor Offender? Okay. That will do it for the Sheriff. Thank you very much for coming.

Eric Williams: Thanks, I would just point out that, again, I said this last time, it’s some good news that, you know, while the hiring freeze is in place, and, you know, we’re going through a few more hurdles as office holders, it’s forced us to look at some things, and just to give you an idea, you know, in the 2009 budget by staging my hiring and letting them pool up and leaving them open as long as we possibly could before we had to fill those gaps, I believe my office and personnel dollars returned almost $300,000 to the budget last year, which could almost entirely be attributed to that staging and leaving line items open, without losing any employees when it was all said and done.

President Lloyd: Okay, we’ll move on to account 1480, County Council, page 107. Any questions on County Council? The large items, Insurance and Computer Services. I had asked Matt Arvay to come in on the Computer Services. You should have a separate hand out. The long legal pad, or legal sheet, and if you look there’s a number of columns there, but it does show you the trending in the county’s computer costs, 2008, $1,534,000, go to the final column, second from the end, 2011, $2,175,566 is the request. I thought, based on some of the comments that I’d heard from the Councilmembers that for the increase we wanted to see if Matt could come in and help explain that. Councilmembers had questions. Now, we have in our budget, it’s line item number 3860, this is for all of the computer processing, except the courts, we show, I guess, we flat lined it $1.7 million, which is obviously low, and I think this year we’re going to come in, if you take just June 30^th times two, $1.9 million approximately. So, anyway, Matt, if you might want to explain the increase, the four hundred and some thousand increase.

Matt Arvay: Sure. Matt Arvay, CIO for Vanderburgh County. The total increase that Councilman Lloyd referenced is really attributed to three proposed projects. One is a new financial system for the county. The second one would be a PC refresh and licensing, Microsoft licensing program for the county. The third would be a facilities support enhancement. Do you want to just go at them one at a time? Okay, we’ll take the PC refresh and license compliancy program. As computers age, in the past individual departments purchased computers. A few years ago Council tried to control that a little bit by making sure that departments submitted PC requests in their budget submittals. Subsequently, since that time, the city has implemented a like program where we were able to negotiate down computer costs by using the bulk purchasing power of the city and negotiate down rates. What we would like to do is implement the same thing on the county. The first phase of this would replace 315 desktops, 65 laptop notebooks, which would all be over five years old by the time January of next year, and then the real critical piece would be also the licensing. That licensing takes into consideration Microsoft Office, which is Word, Excel, things of that nature, Outlook, which is the e-mail system, the client side e-mail. The client side Sequel server, when we have the new tax and billing system, ProVal, the proposed financial system, Sequel server is the data base on the back end, and you need a client side license to use that application to be compliant and to access that information. So, what’s in the proposal is to purchase 522 licenses that would encompass everybody in the county minus the courts. The courts have their own refresh program. A few years ago they purchased the necessary Microsoft licensing at that point, and they feel at this point they are fine and taken care of. I believe 2013 would be the courts and a few other offices would be five years old, that would be the Assessor, Auditor, Recorder, Treasurer. At that point the courts would entertain maybe getting into an EA agreement at that time, and they’re large enough to have a separate EA agreement outside the county.

Matt Arvay: I did take the liberty to see if we could get a quote to lease this equipment and software over five years, and I was able to get a 2.99 percent rate just to use as a baseline, which would make the annual payments, which is what I submitted, $243,562 a year over five years. If you used that 2.99 percent.

President Lloyd: Okay, then, let’s just get through these then we’ll go with the questions. So, the next item was, was it the FASBE?

Matt Arvay: This is getting off the VAX mainframe, a 20 plus year old piece of equipment.

Matt Arvay: Very hard to share information with departments. Very time consuming for the Auditor’s office in maintaining budgets and the P.O. process and payroll and different things of that nature. So, this system that’s proposed would be Tyler Technologies, which is the system that the city went through an RFP process. We had many demos, on-site demonstrations that the county took part of, and when the city signed the contract I had it written in the contract that the county would have two years, if they felt the need, to get a 57 percent discount if they wanted to move forward with Tyler. So, they could take advantage of the RFP process that had already been completed and move forward. I did talk to County Attorney Ted Ziemer and he said that would be an appropriate way that the county could move forward with Tyler due to the fact that it would be services and software based, no hardware would be included.

Bill Fluty: It’s going to impact all county offices sooner or later. They view FASBE now to look at their revenues and expenses, some that have revenues, but it hasn’t impacted across the board. But mostly housed in the Auditor’s office.

Matt Arvay: No, the city is going to take about a two year implementation time line. They are heavily into the financials right now, finalizing the chart of accounts, they started with purchase order processing, contract management, bid management, they’ve talked about revenue aspects with the Area Plan Commission and the Building Authority, and then we’re –

Matt Arvay: So it’s going to take about eighteen to twenty-four months on the city side and the financials, we’re shooting for to start the brand new budget year in January on the new system.

Matt Arvay: The estimated cost is $575,405. I did, again, get a – we wanted to lease it, a lease quote and that’s what I submitted in the budget would be year one of the lease at $160,234.25, is what it comes to.

President Lloyd: And then what would be the time frame of the county getting off of the VAX? Would it be within a year or would that be longer?

Matt Arvay: The third item is a facility’s management and support enhancement. Currently, what I do is I have to take a look at the amount of devices and support personnel that we have and what that impact is on the user community so one of the things I did is I went out and everybody probably recognizes the name Gartner. They’re an independent third party group that is not affiliated with any hardware resellers or support provider companies, and they go out and they do a lot of assessments and they look at government, private industry and they kind of look at marketing trends. And what I did was, I gathered some numbers and one of the matrixes that they have here is a low stressed IT department, an average and a high, and when we talked about help desk, they say you should have one help desk person for every 275 calls. Well, currently, we’re averaging, this year if we prorate it, we’re going to have about 6,600 help desk calls this year. So when you look at the computer -- we have about 750 on the city side and on the county it gets a little bit different because we have some desktop support that the courts do and we have the Sheriff that has some support personnel. So what I tried to do was in the PC refresh, we have 919 computers total would be desktops, laptops, notebooks. I said okay, we know we have 367 computers outside of the two organizations I just mentioned. On the court side we do all the call triaging, so although the courts support personnel handle the desk tops, they still can call 5100, we document everything, and then we transfer that call on to the courts personnel. So I said that probably had an estimated 35% impact on staff. We’ve still got to document the help desk call and we’ve got to transfer it to get it fixed, so I reduced that down to about 139 computers and I subtracted the Sheriff’s office. So on the county side there is about 506 computers that the computer services, out of the 919, support on the desktops. So total, we have about 1,256 computers that the computer services department supports. And we have four and a half help desk people there, four full-time help desk staff and we have a supervisor, help desk supervisor that also in addition does many other jobs, security, things of that nature. So if you look at the support ratio, we’re about one for every 279 computers.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, can we – Matt, of the 506, does that include, as an example, the health department?

Matt Arvay: Now the courts, we still support all the servers, backup, disaster recovery, internet connections, but what I’m just referencing here are desktop computers and laptops.

Councilmember Raben: What I would like to see is, of this overall refresh program, your software, everything, I would like a breakdown by department, by office.

Councilmember Raben: You know, a suggestion here, Mr. President, is one, I don’t know why, when the Health department, as an example, has its own levy, why we’re paying for that out of general fund. The Assessor’s office, we have reassessment funds, we could probably, there is GIS related stuff here probably, right, the same computers probably are running GIS programs.

Matt Arvay: The GIS monies really aren’t for the desktop, it’s more for the servers.

Councilmember Raben: I understand, but that could also qualify into Reassessment, because we use GIS for reassessment.

Councilmember Raben: I guess I’m asking for your help with the breakdown and then identifying where we can point some of this hundreds of thousands of dollars into other areas that don’t affect our property tax, and wouldn’t affect this budget as much. But we’ve got a lot of other monies out there, you know, the Recorder’s office, that’s got a fund bigger than we’re able to spend, you know, we can probably augment some of their computer costs to the Perpetuation fund. There’s a lot of areas, a whole lot of areas and when you think about it, you know, there’s fees collected everywhere, the Prosecutor’s office, you know, we might need to break this whole computer budget back out and put it in those other lines or other budgets where it doesn’t affect property tax or our general fund.

Matt Arvay: And we do have a breakdown. This was a topic, a business topic that went to an ITAC subcommittee, so we had business leaders and individuals from across the enterprise participate and they did a very good job of putting together the numbers, looking at different hardware options and if you don’t mind, I’d just like to mention, because they put in a lot of volunteer time: Rick Davis, County Treasurer; Jenny Collins, City Controller; Gary Heck, with the Health department; Ben Miller, the Building Commissioner; Tim VanCleave of the courts; Z Tuley, the County Recorder and John Staples of computer services. So the ITAC subcommittee is a volunteer group that they volunteer their time and they wanted to take a good hard look at these numbers and I really give them a lot of credit for taking the time to make a recommendation to me.

President Lloyd: I think that’s an excellent idea by Jim Raben, that we could look at allocating some of these costs, and we’ll talk to the Health department tomorrow, but I believe they do have a grant for some PC’s. I don’t know if you guys communicated with them. So, I mean, there’s other opportunities for revenue. You’re right, that this doesn’t have to be in the general fund. Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, actually, I had down in my notes along the same lines and thinking that – the only thing I would like for us to see is attach some kind of caveat onto it that we don’t get into the problem of some departments running off then and getting 22 inch screens or, you know, and others doing 17 and all the problems that we dealt with before when it was divvied up a bit more, that we can set those controls, I think, on it in the beginning and so that there is clear understanding of what we expect to be bought out of that money for the different departments.

Councilmember Raben: I agree with you 100% and in our earlier conversation today, talking about not everybody having a printer at their desk. In the real world, that doesn’t exist. In the private sector, you know, you might have to walk from here to the back of this room to a common printer. So I like a lot of what I heard today, just in regards to that. But, you know, I hope we’re looking at, you know, as we talk about particularly this much money, we’re screwing down to as small a detail as – you know, does this person really use a computer enough that it merits even a computer sitting at their desk? You know, is it something they click on once a day to retrieve emails or are they actually, is their day filled with running programs within their computer? I find it hard to believe that we need the 506, well, it’s actually more than that, for the county.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, I can’t imagine that we need 919 computers. I think the county only has what, 700 employees?

Matt Arvay: Right, and one thing I would suggest, that maybe you still allow the asset management aspects to run through the computer services so we can make sure that the 22 inch monitors do not pop up, that we help manage what’s purchased and signed off on, and we have set a standard what everybody should get, and as far as the additional machines, yeah, they’re out there. We probably need to work together on some of these programs –

Councilmember Raben: Well, that’s the things you should be doing. I mean, as we look at that, we need to be identifying those. I think, I mean, you know, it sounds to me like we’ve got room to cut a couple hundred computers out of the whole network. And do we have people that we’re buying laptops for that also have a PC on their desk?

Matt Arvay: Well, see, the problem on the county side is the elected official aspect. The elected officials deem what they feel is necessary for their staff to do their job so we really need to find a way to work with the elected official to see if we can trim back on the amount of computers and what they deem would be necessary for their staff to fulfill what they feel is their obligation. That’s where we struggle a little bit as the computer service provider because we do not dictate to elected officials how they run their office.

Councilmember Raben: How do we get such a huge imbalance? I mean, give me an example.

Matt Arvay: We have public kiosks out there, you have machines potentially that are sitting in boardrooms that may not be used, but you know, again, we have to update the antivirus, we have to keep those machines up to date, otherwise, they become a threat to other machines, to other systems. So if that machine is on the network, we haven’t determined, you know, again, the elected office, is it a valid computer or not, does it have a job responsibility or not. If it’s on the network, it’s our responsibility to make sure it’s safe, up to date, with patches, so it does impact our labor. So, I think, again, we need to look at a way to work with a lot of the elected officials in other departments. The other departments would be the Commissioners.

Councilmember Raben: I would think as a Council we would like to know where those exist. Where there is not somebody assigned to that, where they’re using their sign on every day. I’d like to know, I’d like to be able to identify where all those units are at.

Matt Arvay: We definitely have a break down by department, maybe the idea is to ask that department head or officeholder to confirm the business use of the computers that we have for your department.

Councilmember Raben: I mean, if we have them sitting in a boardroom, I don’t know who in this building really has a boardroom, but if we have, if we’re replacing those computers, I think those days are gone. I think those –

Matt Arvay: We don’t have that many boardrooms around so that wouldn’t be your couple hundred, a lot of them are your public kiosks and just other functions that that officeholder or department head feels they need it for. I think really the next step would be to have them validate the need for all the machines in their office and then make some decisions from there.

President Lloyd: I mean, I don’t know if you have people that have desktop computers, but they’re always on their laptop, and they’re leaving the building with a laptop. Those are the kind of things that you’re looking at.

Councilmember Raben: Right, they don’t need, if you have a laptop in this building you don’t need a desktop.

Councilmember Shetler: And do you have mobile devices that are counted in that number as well?

Councilmember Shetler: Okay. I mean, you have to go through some kind of security check and make sure those are clean, though, as people are trying to access? Yeah, exactly, if someone has an Iphone where they’re able to access.

Matt Arvay: No, you’re accessing information through the internet. They’re not connected to our inside network.

Matt Arvay: Well, it’s coming in through the internet and they’re already passing through security devices, but they’re not coming through their Iphone running an application at this point, they have laptops out there that we have VPN concentrators on. In other words, that’s secure tunneling from a laptop in the field through the Internet to our inside systems. We don’t really have anything on the phones other than our websites, stuff like that that they access.

Councilmember Raben: I know I’m asking for you to do a lot of homework, but along with what percent of what department is part of this overall, I would also like a list of the 65, who holds the 65 laptops and do they have PC’s assigned to them as well.

Matt Arvay: We definitely have the breakdown of the laptops and what departments. But do they have an assigned desktop in addition, we’ll get with the department head or elected official and ask them on behalf of Council.

Councilmember Goebel: Yes. I concur with Councilman Raben, I think he’s brought up some very good points because it seems like we have more than one per employee and maybe that’s a little bit heavy. In fact, it is. As far as replacement, when you have, when you replace computers that are five years or older, and then get the proper licensing, what exactly do we include in the replacement of let’s say, a desktop, is that everything? Monitor and all?

Councilmember Goebel: What do we do with a perfectly good, functioning monitor that doesn’t need to be replaced?

Matt Arvay: Well, if it is, you can just trickle that down. I mean, you can trickle down, you usually replace the total system when you replace them. If you want us to try to break down the monitor cost versus the desktop, I mean, we can do that.

Councilmember Goebel: Monitors are about like these? Those things last it seems like more than five years.

Councilmember Goebel: I think most of them do. I haven’t seen one yet to go out. I mean, it’s about like a television screen, maybe we could save some money in that regard.

President Lloyd: Other questions on the computer line item? Okay, well, I guess we’ve given you a few things to work on, Matt. Thank you. Why don’t we go to, while we’re on computers, the court computers, item 3461 Court Technology, and that would be Mr. VanCleave. And there is a revised budget request, has 456,461 in the last column and he’s going to explain that.

Tim VanCleave: Good morning, Tim VanCleave. I’m the executive IT director for the Vanderburgh County courts. I’d like to start out by just mentioning that technology does need to have a role as a tool for the environment and one of the things that you’ve heard is the recurring statement from public safety and the courts is the amount of cases filed. The courts filed over 64,000 cases last year and technology is a cornerstone in conjunction with the staffing to accomplish the productivity to cover those without significantly increasing the court staff. I did a little bit of research and back in 1978, before technology, well, I guess I should say the technology was a typewriter and everything was done by paper based, it took about 84 employees to handle that 25 - 26,000 filings. As you can tell by that 64,000 number, case filings have doubled annually since then. That’s not counting the supplemental filings that come in –

– 5,000 filings during the year. Needless to say, you all are quite aware that the court has not doubled their staff since 1978, but yet they’re able to continue handling and processing these increases in case filings. So as we take a look at that, I just wanted to kind of put that out, it’s been a while since I brought that up and technology does, it is expensive. And as you take a look at this particular budget, we are asking for a small increase. A couple of items that had been brought up and discussed was a maintenance agreement for the arraignment system which helps in reducing the cost for transportation from the jail facility to here as well as security.

President Lloyd: That’s the fourth item from the bottom, Video Arraignment, so that would be $16,500, new item in the budget. And that’s for video conference with prisoners at the jail.

Tim VanCleave: Another item that’s been a line item in the budget that we show is the script logic, which is part of our court security for the computer devices that we’ve had in there as a placeholder showing that that would start in 2011. We are estimating that at $12,500. And then, of course, we talked a little bit about the state voters registration which would be an Election Office item, but we would probably flow that information through this particular budget. But I just wanted that out there so that we know that that could be something that we are faced with in 2011. The biggest item that we have coming forward is the Courtview, which is our case management system for the courts, which is the cornerstone application that is used. Over the past two to three years, we’ve been working with the vendor who has indicated that they’ve noticed that our number of connections has been increasing. But in our discussions with them, we have concurrent licensing which means that as long as, it doesn’t matter how many people are connected, the number of connections at any given time have to be equal to or less than the licensing. And they were having difficulties in getting the definition from their software providers as to what does a concurrent license mean. As an example, a user in the courts may have two sessions going to Courtview, which is similar to me holding on to this podium with two hands. The questions is, does that count as one license or two? Well, we finally worked through that and that only counts as one license. So as we were reviewing the license count situation with them, we were able to realize that we weren’t exceeding to the level that had initially been indicated. And I kept asking them for ways to prove the concurrent license and they were struggling until this year to accomplish that, and they have brought enough evidence forward, that does bring concern to me that we need to start talking about it and try to address the connectivity to Courtview. Right now we are looking at doing business the way we do today, which is extending that out to the Sheriff’s office, police department, EPA, DMD, several other offices that use this information where we are now needing maybe somewhere between fifty and one hundred licenses to increase. And that doesn’t sound too bad until you hear the retail price of a license today is over $4,000. So, and shooting in the middle there, about seventy-five licenses retail would be somewhere around $366,000. So the question is, is that a wise investment? That’s where we start to work on looking at, how is Courtview used, are there other alternatives that we can do to provide the same information? Because turning off access to these other agencies, only turns into more work back because they still need the information, how they get the information is they pick up the phone and call the court staff or the Clerk’s staff and take them away from the other duties that they’re trying to accomplish. So the question is, how do we balance the information distribution with the human labor costs. We met with President Lloyd last week and we do believe that there are some other ways that we can move forward and not necessarily have to incur that licensing cost. So it would involve deploying some new technology, but we think that we can cover that under budgeting for the courts that have been perpetuated since we’ve deployed Courtview. So if the county does decide to go forward with the county refresh program that Mr. Arvay was just talking about, the courts could start to work towards a 2011 or a 2012 deployment of the next phase of the court technology plan that we’ve been working on since 2002 now. So that’s a big piece to the puzzle that we are looking at in moving forward. We actually did not budget additional significant amount of money for addressing that because we haven’t really looked at all the options but we did increase about six percent on the Courtview license or Courtview maintenance line item with some anticipation that there may be some increase there. We would also like to move forward with the enterprise agreements. As we move forward now because it does appear that the lease rates for hardware and this software at 2.99 percent is at a good number, which would save money over the long term if we can get a five year lease.

President Lloyd: Any questions on the court system? I guess one of the things that came out of our discussion, the police, the Evansville Police, they don’t need full licenses, and obviously, the county shouldn’t pay for those on Courtview. One of the things that we’re looking at is kind of like a group type of view system. I mean, the police aren’t in there making changes to the records, only the courts are doing that. So really, all they want to do is view, so there’s a scaled down type of way to do this without having to buy that license, right?

Tim VanCleave: Right. Courtview offers a public access module that is significantly less with an unlimited number of users that provides that insight into the court records, but doesn’t have the ability to enter any data. The one downside of that is that it doesn’t allow the printing of docket sheets or the court calendar, which does have some bearing on the operations in the outside agencies, but we believe that there is another method that we can deploy and provide that same service and not incur that significant cost because with each Courtview license, there is a recurring cost each year that then perpetuates forward. That is the best scenario that we see right now moving forward. There are some other options that we are still looking into such as licence control software that when we see inactivity from a user it would log them off and free up the licenses. We have looked at going on to the state system, but with what we’ve already talked about with the state voters registration, there is always hesitations about moving to that because it may or may not ultimately save any money here at the local level. We are looking at interfaces that might allow us to distribute the information differently, but a lot of times there’s a lot of programming costs that go into those, so probably not as cost effective as the solution that we’ve already talked about. But we’re looking at several other options as well. But the one with the public access, with report generation seems to be the most cost effective fit.

President Lloyd: Other questions for the court computer? Thank you very much. Anything else in County Council’s budget? Insurance, I guess the only question I’d have to Mrs. Deig, are we going to hit our 2010 budget amount of 9.8 million?

Councilmember Raben: I would also like to do what I mentioned on the computers with insurance, the offices, you know, where we can push it off on reassessment, where ever we can move Insurance, we need to try to break that out. I mean, like the Assessor’s office as an example, if we can put that on Reassessment, let’s do it. And that’s a question if we can or can’t. I’m not saying – we need to check to make sure that the Reassessment fund can pick up the Insurance side.

Councilmember Shetler: But at least the employees that are already being paid underneath those other funds ought to – that insurance appropriate for them, it should be.

Councilmember Raben: Well, most of your grant lines have the insurance in there. But we do, again, we’ve got some other offices that I think have funds that, where the statute allows us to pay insurance out of those, I want to move them there.

President Lloyd: Okay, we’ll move on. Next would be 911 Emergency Service fund, and this is actually the Central Dispatch, it’s page 155. We already had that under joint budget, unless anybody had any other questions on that.

President Lloyd: Okay, we’ll move on to the next one, 2861 Local Emergency Planning, page 153. Any questions on that? It looks like there’s a decrease in that budget.

President Lloyd: If no questions, we’ll move on to account 3280, Local Drug Free Community, page 154. Is that, oh, here we go. I thought someone administered this.

Wanda McCarter: Hello, my name is Wanda McCarter, I’m the current program director for the Substance Abuse Council.

President Lloyd: But we don’t show any rent here, so I guess that’s funded by grants?

Wanda McCarter: Yes, that’s also funded under the Discretionary funds. They are the fees collected for anyone facing alcohol or drug abuse charges. They were set up by the Governor’s Commission, and governed by the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute.

President Lloyd: How much would that be? Like for a typical instance, what’s the fee?

Wanda McCarter: I’m not sure without – it can range anywhere from 200 to 2,000.

President Lloyd: And as far as you can tell, I mean, the program will be continuing as is with the grants?

President Lloyd: I guess one question I would have, how are the fees coming in versus prior years? Are they down like the Surveyor indicated?

Z Tuley: They’ve been down but compared to the year, they’re just about steady. But there have been particular months that were down. But we’re back on an upswing right now.

Z Tuley: 2009...I’m not like Eric, I can’t come up with this stuff off the top of my head. Based on this report that I have in front of me, it was like a half million. But it also indicates that it might have been like for eight months or seven months. But the number of documents are holding steady as well.

Z Tuley: It’s going to be a little bit more than that. It’s probably close to seven by the time you wrap up. Unless we take another dive. This is why this is so hard to predict because we could head on to another slow spell again.

President Lloyd: About the same. Okay. Overall, this budget is only up $6,000, 1.5%.

President Lloyd: Would it help Councilmembers if we knew what the fees were coming in? I mean, if you could get us that, maybe just a summary.

Councilmember Raben: It would be interesting to know what the Recorder’s Perpetuation fund amount is to date.

Z Tuley: It is 800,000. We are fee based, established by the state. They set the rate, they also sat and established what it can be used for and what it cannot be used for.

Councilmember Shetler: Could we review that again? I know we do that every year, but can we review just exactly what money can be used for?

Z Tuley: There are some gray areas as to what that money can be used for. I have spoken to the State Board of Accounts about it at length, and they have determined that when it gets into a very gray area, right now they just kind of take a hands off position on most of it unless it’s clearly misused, and then they will come forth and say you can’t do that. But there’s not a set of established items, I can tell you in general, operational, you had mentioned earlier that perhaps the Recorder could pay for its own. I think in the whole scheme of a computer refresh program, it’s not going to assist the county in any great numbers. However, I don’t object, and it’s not against state policy for the Recorder to purchase their own computer equipment, our own screens, our own equipment that causes or that is involved with the upkeep and availability and the processing of the documents. So that would obviously –

Councilmember Raben: I think the only thing that it really states is that it cannot be used on salaries.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, that’s very clear. I think you can pretty much use it for whatever it takes to maintain that office from that point on.

Z Tuley: I don’t know, I didn’t ask that. I do have a contract and it was for putting on the old data that was not on the computer system and so since this contract hires people to get it on the computer system, it was clearly eligible.

Councilmember Shetler: And then what about other departments that interact with you, be it Treasurer or Auditor or –

Z Tuley: I did not get an exception with the Area Plan because I was needing one of those larger printable plat maps and so I did agree to partially fund an Area Plan large plat printer and I did not get an exception on that. So that was good to go. I didn’t fund it entirely because it wasn’t going to sit in my office for my needs, but I didn’t have a problem with footing what I felt like was our share of the bill. And we do have customer demands for that and we do have some of that on the computer, we just lack the ability to be able to print it. And so in light of the public and the Council needing to tighten up their budget and the public expecting us not to do too much duplication, I felt like it was financially responsible to assist and have a joint machine that we all used than for me to up and purchase my own.

President Lloyd: And then when you need those printouts or maps, you should be at the head of the line, right?

Z Tuley: We are not having a problem with the system set up. Area Plan has been extremely cooperative, very helpful. And oh, another advantage to having it set up this way, in order for Area Plan to print it, it has to be scanned into their equipment as well, so now they also have access to that same map that we use. So its actually benefitted them as well.

Annie Groves: Hi, Annie Groves, Vanderburgh County Coroner. When I submitted my budget this time, I comprehend the economy, the way things are right now. I have asked for no increases, it’s the same budget that I have for 2010. If I can have that same budget again, I could make it providing we don’t have a disaster. I would also like to say that at the end of the year I’m going to have to do some transfers because our caseload is up 35% from where it was last year at this time. And as you well know, I can’t control that.

Councilmember Kiefer: More crime and more deaths. Man, it’s depressing sitting here.

Councilmember Goebel: I just saw, your report the other day to the media was a very good one and helped shed some light on what you have to do day in and day out.

President Lloyd: Right. Autopsies is one we constantly ask about. It looks like this year is going to go above the prior or the budgeted amount and you’re indicating that’s due to more deaths?

President Lloyd: Okay. I hope we’re having the same number of births or we’re losing ground. Mr. Shetler.

Councilmember Shetler: Getting all those autopsies, that’s kind of my question I get into every year. I know one of the things you’ve indicated in the past is that what affects us is the major hospitals in the area are here. So if there is a death, we end up being responsible many times for those autopsies in southern Illinois, western Kentucky people. One thing that caught my eye the other day is when the person drowned in the Ohio trying to swim across it or whatever happened there. And the autopsy was being done in Madison – oh, is that because it was in the Ohio River at the time?

Annie Groves: The way it is at the Ohio River, it’s where you bring the person out at, and the Coast Guard and the Department of Natural Resources goes to the first available place. So the first available place for them was in Henderson. So therefore, it’s Henderson’s body.

Councilmember Shetler: Oh, I thought they came out of the – did it come out in Dogtown or did it come out of Newburgh?

Annie Groves: No, they went in Newburgh beach, but the way the person was found, they were able to, the closest place to take the body to was to the Henderson side.

Councilmember Shetler: Can we, you know, maybe, I understand that’s been the protocol in the past, but maybe get a better handle on in controlling that and particularly if it’s a Kentucky person that we can automatically just say hey, emergency personnel, take that over to Henderson and –

Annie Groves: I have no control over that. That’s the Department of Natural Resource and the Coast Guard. So that’s federally mandated, it’s not state or local.

President Lloyd: The number of autopsies, now you do receive work from other counties, right?

Annie Groves: Yeah, we do. In Indiana, if the person dies, if someone is life flighted or transported in from Posey County and they die here, we do bill them back for all the work that we do. We bill them for the autopsy, we bill them for the toxicology, we bill them for our morgue fee, the transport, and that all goes into the general fund. However, we cannot bill Kentucky and Illinois and I know over the weekend we had six cases all were motor vehicle accidents, everyone of them came from Illinois.

Annie Groves: But state law will permit us to bill Indiana. However, they can’t bill us either, if one of our people die over there.

President Lloyd: Okay, any other questions for the Coroner? Okay, thank you very much.

President Lloyd: We will take our recess and reconvene tomorrow at 8:30. Thank you for coming.

The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 18^th day of August, 2010 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 8:30 a.m. by County Council President Russell Lloyd, Jr.

President Lloyd: I would like to reconvene the Vanderburgh County Council 2011 budget session. Attendance roll call please.

COUNCILMEMBER	PRESENT	ABSENT
Councilmember Terry	X
Councilmember Bassemier	X
Councilmember Shetler	X
Councilmember Goebel	X
Councilmember Raben	X
Councilmember Kiefer	X
President Lloyd	X

President Lloyd: I would like to ask Councilman Goebel to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand.

President Lloyd: Thank you. Before we get started, we receive a publication from the National Association of Counties, I don’t know if Councilmembers received this yesterday, but if you looked at page four the headline is, “Budget Shortfalls Force Counties to Cut Vital Staff, 37 Percent of Counties Lay Off Sheriff, Police and Fire Personnel in Cut Backs.” So, a real tough situation for a lot of counties in this recession. We’re hoping that we’re not in that position, but, obviously, we want to do everything we can to limit employees and new expenditures. We’ll move on to our scheduled agenda. The first department would be number 1303, Public Defender Commission, and that’s on page 77.

Steve Owens: Steve Owens, Public Defender. The only thing I would have to point out as to our budget requests for this year is on page, actually it’s on page 78. There are two corrections, line item 1770 is listed at $38,302, that should be $38,202, and line item 1820 was listed at $38,230, that should be $40,072, forty thousand seventy two dollars. There is a step increase that will come into effect during the 2011 year that I did not anticipate, or I did not see when we were preparing the budget originally.

Steve Owens: Jim, that would be 1820, Administrative Assistant. She will hit a ten year step increase in January of ‘11.

Steve Owens: The correct amount should be $40,072. It’s a PAT, I believe it’s a PAT IV position.

Steve Owens: The first one would be 1770, Paralegal, we had it set in at $38,302, it’s actually $38,202.

President Lloyd: Okay, is there any questions for Mr. Owens? If you look on the budget, the very last item, Death Penalty, $250,000. That figure, obviously, that does not include what’s been expended so far in 2010.

Steve Owens: No, it does not. Nor does it include what’s been appropriated in 2010. That’s the figure that we anticipate we probably will need in 2011. As you know, that case has been venued to Clark County.

Steve Owens: That trial date has been moved. It’s now late April of ‘11, yes.

Steve Owens: There will be an appeal, assuming there’s a conviction, an appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court, then potentially a petition to transfer to the United States Supreme Court.

Councilmember Shetler: Can you refresh my memory, how much did we appropriate this year for that? Was that about a hundred?

Councilmember Shetler: So, now we’ll have, if this is approved, half a million dollars, more or less, in reserve to cover that?

Steve Owens: I don’t know if I want to go that far. We’re hoping that certainly would cover it.

Steve Owens: Well, we’re hoping that that’s going to be adequate to cover it. We’ve already filed our first reimbursement request with the State for the first three months worth of capital expenditures. They will consider that at their next meeting, which I believe is in September. They reimburse at 50 percent, so we should be getting some money back already before the end of this year.

Councilmember Shetler: What, and, I’m kind of going along the lines of cash flow in this, that two hundred and fifty that’s been appropriated, how long, how far will that get you into next year? Assuming that everything stays on schedule?

Steve Owens: I don’t know. I can’t answer that question, how far is it going to get us into next year. We’re still in the process of obtaining experts and still working on the case, obviously. How that’s going to fare, I can’t tell you. I would anticipate, and we think, at least at where we are right now, that the two fifty will get us through the end of this year, hopefully, into next year, but how far in to next year I can’t tell you.

Steve Owens: I believe it’s the, well, I know it’s the latter part of April, I can’t give you the exact date.

Councilmember Shetler: So, we will need that half a million dollars between now and a year from now, for sure?

Steve Owens: –that’s already in the account. I would anticipate we’re going to need, obviously, somewhere around two hundred and fifty for next year. You’re going to have some trial costs that I cannot accurately predict at this point. Then, there’s going to be some appellate costs, and the appeals are not inexpensive. I think we’re up in the $60,000 or so bracket on the Wilkes appeal, and we pretty well have completed that.

Councilmember Shetler: And, you, how long do you have to file for an appeal after the court decision? Assuming that’s–

Steve Owens: Thirty days after, we file the notice of appeals thirty days after sentencing, and then it takes a while to prepare a transcript. These are very lengthy trials, generally speaking, so, it’s months before the appeal is actually perfected.

Councilmember Bassemier: Could there be another one pending? From reading in the paper I was thinking there was another one could be pending coming up here in the near future.

Steve Owens: I don’t know. I don’t know whether they’re going to file another one or not.

Steve Owens: They don’t usually tell me in advance what they’re going to do.

Councilmember Bassemier: Okay. Thanks. We’ll just wait till he gets up here. We’ll just wait till he gets up here before I ask him if that’s a possibility. Thank you, sir.

Councilmember Goebel: Steve, did you mention that the prior capital case is, we’re pretty much through with that as far as our county financial responsibility?

Steve Owens: Pretty much. We filed the Petition for Cert with the United States Supreme Court. That has not been ruled on yet. Assuming that’s denied, we’re done.

Steve Owens: If it’s, obviously, if it’s granted we’ve got some other issues that we’ll have to deal with, but, I would anticipate we’re pretty completed with that. We’ve got all of the bills in, everything’s been paid.

Councilmember Goebel: Do you know, off the top of your head, how much that cost Vanderburgh County?

Councilmember Goebel: Okay, and how much have we spent so far in the current case? Would you know?

Steve Owens: I’m going to give you a rough figure, because I’m not (Inaudible).

Steve Owens: I hadn’t really prepared for that question. I’m going to guess it’s about sixty.

Councilmember Goebel: Okay, and we have allotted two hundred and fifty. So, we’ve got–

Steve Owens: We have, if you’ll recall, we had transferred some money from another line item to initially fund it, then we appropriated two hundred and fifty. So, we started out to complete this year with somewhere around $272,000, roughly. If we’ve spent sixty, we’ve got around $210,000 or so left.

Councilmember Goebel: Okay, thank you. Purely from a financial standpoint, for our county and for all of the counties, is there any movement that you’re aware of underfoot to do away with death penalty? Because, I think, the cost, financially, is much higher to go through this process. Has it been brought up at all to your knowledge in the State?

Steve Owens: I don’t think there’s any serious effort to abolish the death penalty in Indiana. The number of death penalty requests have been falling for the last several years, partially because of the cost. We probably are, have the fewest number of pending death penalty cases in Indiana right now that we’ve had in the past ten years.

Councilmember Goebel: Okay, and the automatic appeal to the State, that is mandated?

Steve Owens: We have to take that, we have to do an appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court, obviously, and then beyond that we see.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, Steve, what is our process for submitting those claims or the reimburseables? Do we do that monthly or weekly?

Steve Owens: The, you mean, for the reimbursement, Jim? The reimbursement claims have to be submitted within 120 days in capital cases of the date they’re paid. So, we paid the May, the late April, May and June have already been submitted for reimbursement. The July expenses were just paid in August, so, we’ll probably wait until, I don’t know, September, roughly, to make another reimbursement claim. We try to lump them together. The Commission only meets quarterly, so we gain nothing by submitting them monthly, particularly.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, I was concerned about how quick we’re trying to get our money back into the county General Fund.

Steve Owens: Well, we went ahead and submitted the first ones so they would be considered at the September meeting, even though we weren’t outside the time lines. Obviously, I don’t know where our August bills are going to be at this point. It’s unlikely, I don’t anticipate, although it’s possible that we might submit a second request for the July and August bills, if we can get them in there before the September meeting. I’ll just have to see how that rolls. We’re now dealing with Clark County, so things go to Clark County and come back and that slows the process down a little bit.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, this is another one of those budgets that we need to look hard at moving the Insurance line into this budget, where we would get 40 percent of that back from the State.

Steve Owens: –what account it’s coming from. You’re already getting 40 percent of the insurance back.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, even though it’s not reflected in your budget we’re still getting it? Okay.

President Lloyd: Other questions for Mr. Owen? The only, I guess, maybe a bigger picture type question, you’ve had some shifting around of personnel where you, I think, you lost a full time and added a part time, or the other way around. Do you anticipate these personnel would serve your needs, or do you look at maybe having some other part timers?

Steve Owens: So, as we are losing part timers, we’ve been consolidating those into full time positions. I would anticipate we’re going to continue to do that. The one thing that’s going to hinder that more than anything is just the physical space, in terms of the number of offices we have available to put full time people in. I think we can probably absorb, and we may have towards the end of this year, there may be some part time openings, I may come back to you then and ask to consolidate that into a full time. We probably can absorb one more full time office.

President Lloyd: What, and on your support staff, are there any personnel where you could maybe take a full time and make them part time? Or, are they, do you have enough support staff for the attorneys, or do you have too many attorneys?

Steve Owens: Well, the Public Defender Commission pretty much limits our support staff. They have two different standards. They have one that’s adequately supported and one that’s inadequately supported. That’s defined by the number of secretaries and paralegals and investigators. We operate in sort of a dual mode. Some of the attorneys are considered to be adequately supported, some of them are inadequately supported. If we were to cut support staff, it’s going to cut the number of cases that the adequately supported attorneys can handle, which would not be a good thing for our office or the attorneys. We are marginally supported right now. I think, two years ago, I think we made a proposal to add an additional paralegal and an additional investigator to help bring us up to being adequately supported across the board, the Council did not want to approve those positions. So, we’ve gone to this hybrid situation.

Steve Owens: Presently, I have five full time attorneys, 12 part time felony attorneys, four juvenile/civil attorneys, and three part time misdemeanor attorneys.

President Lloyd: Out of those numbers how many would you say are inadequately supported?

Steve Owens: All of the misdemeanor, all of the juvenile, and three of the full time attorneys are inadequately supported. The 12 part time felony attorneys, and two of the full time felony attorneys are adequately supported.

President Lloyd: So, are you, I guess, the management of the office, you want to adequately support the more serious crimes at this point? Or, does it matter?

President Lloyd: Well, it sounds like the felonies would be adequately supported, I mean, those may be more serious crimes in light of people going to jail and things like that.

Steve Owens: Well, that’s the way we have set it up. We don’t receive reimbursement for misdemeanors. We don’t receive reimbursement for civil/juvenile cases. We could handle a few more juvenile delinquency cases with the attorneys we have if we had some additional support staff. The three attorneys who are handling felony cases in that office, the full time lawyers, including me, if we had additional support staff we could increase our numbers a little bit. Again, we’re going to run into some issues in terms of the physical location. Where are you going to put these additional people? But, it would increase some numbers a little bit. I don’t know, I haven’t sat down and churned the dollar numbers as to if we added an additional investigator and paralegal, in terms of what it would cost the county, if we would gain a whole lot at this point.

President Lloyd: Now, one other thing, the part timers, don’t they also use their own law office staff to assist in these, or not?

President Lloyd: Okay, they’re billed back to the Public Defender Office, or not?

Steve Owens: They’re using their private staff for typing or to answer phone calls, they don’t bill that back to us.

President Lloyd: Okay. Any other questions on the Public Defender? Just for the record, budget increase, $228,595, 12 percent, but it’s, the bulk of it is the Death Penalty, which was zero last year. Let’s move on to....oh, Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: To follow up real quick on Jim’s point, the computer system that’s all used through here, do you report that back into the State for getting reimbursement? Any of the costs that’s associated with that?

Steve Owens: Any time we get any additional equipment, computers, telephones, we have that broke out by whoever is providing it. We do seek reimbursement for that, yeah.

Steve Owens: Well, it’s been a while since we’ve done the computers, I don’t remember. It seems like Tim, it seems like the last time we got computers for the office, Tim gave us a figure as to what those computers, what our share of that was. We put that in for our reimbursement request.

President Lloyd: Any other questions for Public Defender? Alright, thank you very much?

President Lloyd: Good morning. Councilmember questions for the Prosecutor? Mr. Bassemier?

Councilmember Bassemier: I asked Mr. Owens about, is there a possibility of another murder case pending?

Doug Brown: Really, this probably wouldn’t be the appropriate forum to discuss that. I would be happy to talk with you.

Councilmember Bassemier: I figured that would be the answer, but, okay, thank you.

Councilmember Goebel: Doug, the salaries, those are all just step increases, basically?

Doug Brown: Basically, yeah, well, actually, our budget has gone down because of the employee that we’re not replacing. Mr. Levco had been here speaking of that before.

Councilmember Raben: Doug, in your past experiences, I don’t know how many death penalty cases since you’ve been with the Prosecutor’s Office you’ve been part of, but how much of a role does the family of the plaintiff play in whether or not something goes to a death penalty or not?

Doug Brown: I couldn’t put a percentage on that, but Mr. Levco always meets with the family extensively, and, you know, takes their views into account when he makes his final decision. Some family members don’t want the death penalty, some do, but he tries to, he doesn’t try to, he always does talk to all of those people. I’m not sure how many cases we’ve had, probably five or six since Mr. Levco has been Prosecutor. I know, he has more people on death row than any other Prosecutor.

Councilmember Raben: You know, and, I guess, where I’m going with this is, you know, if the family is insistent upon it, you know, that’s understandable, but where they’re not, you know, at the extreme cost that it costs the taxpayers to fund one of these, I hope we’re cognizant of that.

Doug Brown: He’s very cognizant. I think he’s also been involved in some State-wide committees actually studying the death penalties and the costs. Is it really worth it?

Councilmember Goebel: What is the average cost of going through the process of a typical death penalty compared to let’s say keeping an inmate behind bars?

Doug Brown: I mean, it’s a cost on one end versus the other end. I mean, the county is picking up so much of the cost for the actual trial versus the taxpayers, Department of Correction, the long term care of the inmate. So, I can’t really answer that question.

Councilmember Kiefer: Thank you, Doug, I’m not a legal person, so, my questions may sound very simple to you, but, you know–

Councilmember Kiefer: –for me, I don’t understand the legality of all these things. If you, you know, you’re trying a death penalty case, if for some reason he doesn’t get the, the Prosecutor doesn’t get the verdict on the death penalty that he wishes or hopes for, what then happens? I mean, is life sentencing still a possibility?

Doug Brown: It depends on how it’s filed, but, yeah it goes into a sentencing phase at that point. Actually, it’s what they call bifurcated trial. I mean, there’s two elements, there’s the element of proving the actual charge itself–

Doug Brown: –then there’s the element of determining whether he should get the death penalty or not. Even after it’s, if the jury comes back that there should be a death penalty, the judge could ultimately as the decision maker, he can decide not to give the death penalty.

Councilmember Kiefer: Right, so, ultimately, there’s a possibility that he could just wind up with life without parole?

Councilmember Shetler: Doug, I’m noticing on the Law Books, yesterday the judges came in, we’re dealing with about $12,000-$15,000, I think, that they’re needing, you’re needing, requesting $8,000, the Public Defender was just here, he had $5,000, you know, we’re talking $25,000-$30,000 for law books around this same building. Is there any way, I mean, does it make sense at all for that to be consolidated into one library where everybody can have access to it?

Doug Brown: We would be willing to work with anything as far as that goes. Most of ours, a lot of ours are done online. As far as physical law books, we don’t have that many subscriptions anymore. We don’t even have a full library of cases anymore. We have, our law books are very limited. So, we’ve cut down, if you’ve looked at our budget from years past, it’s gone down, down, down.

Doug Brown: So, we would be willing to work with anything. Most of ours is done online.

Councilmember Shetler: Now, that stuff that’s online, do you have to, I guess, subscribe to that–

Doug Brown: –we have a contract for our whole office, our we hooked in the whole county with that, I’m not sure. No, it’s just us, but everybody has–

Councilmember Shetler: So, the office has one license for it. You don’t have to worry about individually–

Doug Brown: It’s all included. We don’t get charged for each....there’s one package for our whole office.

Councilmember Shetler: Okay. Alright, do you know if that package could be done through, like say, Vanderburgh County in general, instead of, say, Prosecutor’s Office specifically, so that the judges and everybody would have that same kind of license and we wouldn’t have to duplicate that?

Doug Brown: I assume it would. I mean, I would say that would be an area where we have a lot of flexibility. We would be willing to work with whatever the county came up with.

Councilmember Goebel: I was going to say, will you check on that possibility, Doug?

Doug Brown: –and see what they say. Obviously, it would be up to the judges and other members of the legal community, but, yeah–

Councilmember Goebel: But, all of the other departments, basically, work online as well, is that correct?

Doug Brown: Yeah, I think that’s just the way it is now. There’s very few, I mean, our library is more of a storage room than a library.

President Lloyd: Other questions? I guess, since we asked the Public Defender, can you give me roughly how many attorneys you have?

Doug Brown: I can, just because....we have 17 spots, 16 are filled right now with full time attorneys, five part time attorneys.

President Lloyd: Okay, and as of right now, that one spot is just being left open?

Doug Brown: It is being left open, and what we have done is we’ve moved, we’re not going to be asking for the matching grant in our drug program. That person, starting in January will be in our regular set of attorneys.

President Lloyd: So, I guess, on the scales of justice, the Public Defender and the Prosecutor they’re about equal in number of attorneys.

President Lloyd: That’s obviously, it’s the quality of the work the attorney does. In this budget we’re only up $5,000 and that would be the main reason that we have the one attorney missing. So, less than one percent increase. Any other questions on the Prosecutor? We’ll go to 1081, Prosecutor IV-D, page 42.

President Lloyd: Any questions for Mr. Brown? About an $8,800 increase. Okay. Going once, going twice. We’ll move on to 1082-1085, Prosecutor Grants, page 44.

President Lloyd: One director, and that’s check recovery, so, is that a State grant?

Doug Brown: Our check recovery program, I’m not sure what’s on there with that, but that’s privately–

President Lloyd: I guess, it says Prosecutor Fees, that’s probably just the department was called that for a number of years, it’s probably just a grant.

Doug Brown: That may well be the case, yeah, it is now farmed out, its worked quite well for us.

President Lloyd: Okay. Now, on page 45 you’ve got Drug Law Enforcement Program, that budget’s been cut in half. I guess, that’s related to the State?

Doug Brown: Well, that’s related to us moving, we’re not going to be asking, we’re not having to pay the full matching grant, because we’re pulling one employee out of that and putting them into the regular line item and then not filling that position.

President Lloyd: So from your point of view, that grant didn’t change, you just don’t have a person in that line item?

Doug Brown: As far as forfeitures and things of that nature? Do you know off the top of your head?

Doug Brown: And, that’s another thing we’ve farmed out because it was far more efficient to have it privately done and get a percentage than using one of our employees to actually spend the time working on the forfeitures.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, so, as an example, where this budget is $88,000, we’re making up $28,000 out of the County General?

Regene Newman: That actually, that grant is no longer in effect. If you remember last year we had two people we talked about putting them on the General Fund, and instead we just kept the match open and funded their salaries through that. So, we don’t get federal money for that anymore. This year we’re going to take one of those attorneys and move them to the General Fund to where that match is just funding the one attorney. Then the forfeiture money that we get in, it also funds a secretary in our office that’s not on the General Fund.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, so, this will actually make three people that will have shifted from a grant line into the General Fund?

Councilmember Raben: Okay, you know, that’s always been the Catch-22 with these grants, and, you know, we’ve always been very clear that when the grant runs out that–

Councilmember Raben: –you know, we don’t always fund it. I don’t know that we’ve had an opportunity to discuss that until today, but, you know, obviously, we can have some more dialogue between now and September when we finalize these budgets, but, I’m not real fond of that. Again, we’ll discuss this more, I guess.

President Lloyd: Any other questions on the grants? Page 46, that amount’s the same, Witness Assistance. Page 47, that amount’s the same, flat, no change. Any other questions on grants? Okay, we’ll move on to the next department, 2630, Prosecutor Pretrial Diversion, page 147.

President Lloyd: That one’s just, basically, flat. Slight increase in insurance. Mr. Kiefer?

Councilmember Kiefer: Doug, again, my apologies, can you tell me a little bit more about what this Pretrial Diversion is? I mean, what’s the purpose?

Doug Brown: It’s been around for a long time. In a nutshell, it’s for first time offenders, 99.9 percent are misdemeanor cases where they are actually, they get a, they’ve been arrested, they have an opportunity, most crimes, misdemeanors qualify, not drunk driving and things of that nature, they go through a program where they get some counseling, they do some community service and if they stay clear from anywhere from a year to 18 months, the charge is dismissed eventually. That program is primarily funded by users fees.

Councilmember Kiefer: Okay. Yeah, because it looks like it doesn’t have that big of a budget total.

Doug Brown: No, and the person that’s been in there has been in there for over 20 years.

Councilmember Raben: Do you do, like, what, random drug testing to ensure that they’re staying clean? Or, how do you–

Doug Brown: Random drug testing has not been a part of that program. Generally, the people in there aren’t necessarily, have substance abuse problems. I’m not saying that couldn’t happen, but that’s not been part of the program.

President Lloyd: I guess, one other question that hadn’t been brought up, Mrs. Kirk, the County Clerk had mentioned a $25 late fee that the judges, I guess, are looking at doing for violators that don’t pay their fines on time, etcetera, etcetera. Your office has been pretty good on looking at available revenues. I don’t know if there’s other things that the State has passed, law-wise, that...do you know of anything that the Prosecutor’s Office would be looking at for additional fees coming in?

Councilmember Kiefer: Doug, when you have fees and things that aren’t paid, do you guys place liens on their properties or anything?

Doug Brown: We don’t. We don’t, and, generally, if someone doesn’t pay their....most of the, we, actually, on that program, we take the fees up front. So, if they don’t pay it they’re not going on the program.

Doug Brown: So, and people have incentive because they want to get the case dismissed–

Councilmember Raben: We prevent a lot of, we help our overcrowding situation too.

President Lloyd: Any further questions of Mr. Brown and the Prosecutor’s Office? Alright, thank you very much for coming.

President Lloyd: Okay. We’ll move on to 1300, County Commission, page 71 is where we start. There’s quite a few of those.

President Lloyd: Okay, I know I talked to him, I think he was kind of nervous about this. I told him there was nothing to be nervous about.

Troy Tornatta: Well, he informed me that he had in-service at his job, so, he had to be at that. So, I said I would do the pinch hitting.

Troy Tornatta: I’m going to go out, go ahead and pass out some information. We have, I think most of you have got, have received your CAJE information on kind of the wishes of CAJE, with the transportation situation. We are passing out something from Burdette Park for the CCD budget request for 2011, that encapsulates why Steve believes in his numbers. Youth Resources has a document that we’re passing around, that’s why they’ve sent us that information, we’ve put it in the budget, but, obviously, that’s something you guys need to go over. Then, the Vanderburgh County Soil and Water Conservation District, as we know, they’re going to have to move out of their location, and that’s the price increase in their line item. So, it just is pretty self explanatory. I figured I would get that straight to you.

President Lloyd: I guess, I’ll start out while they’re looking, page 72, Property Tax Refunds, Judgements and Refunds we’ve set in a dollar, but you’ve got some pretty big numbers there. Is that just because we have no idea what that will be?

President Lloyd: What are those payouts related to? It would be line item 3220 and 3230. Are those like Sheriff’s sale?

Troy Tornatta: Yep, and we’ve already got that amount set up. I mean, we calculated a certain amount for the appeals?

Bill Fluty: Actually, right now as the appeals come through, when we send money back through a 17T process, they’ve appealed successfully, that goes through the process, we send them their money back if they’ve paid. If they go back three years, they get refunded for three years. Then, at the end of the year we’ll settle this. What we’ll do we’ll take it off the cash for settlement. It could be in Knight Township, it could be in Scott Township, and we do it through each township and it reduces their distribution accordingly for how the appeals fall in each township. So, that’s an unknown number.

Troy Tornatta: Right, but we’re pretty conservative when we....to make sure that we have that cash balance there.

Bill Fluty: Well, the cash balance isn’t there. The cash is coming off property taxes that are paid.

Bill Fluty: So, it’s a reduction of the property taxes that you bill, Because you’ve actually over billed.

Bill Fluty: They’ve either, they’ve paid or they’ve appealed and they’re getting their money back. So, it’s coming off of the billing, or the collections is what it’s coming off of.

Bill Fluty: So, it’s a reduction of collections, which then in turn is a decrease in the property tax distribution to the units. So, the units would be working with less. So, it’s a shortfall of their budget is what it is.

Councilmember Shetler: The USI Mets grant, or whatever, the $25,000, I thought I had been hearing and picking up that that was going up?

Troy Tornatta: What had been worked out is there will be, the city, the board that controls that for the city, the Board of Public Works, I believe, voted that they would discontinue certain services, but it would be a modified schedule, and that would still keep us in the same amount. It would put the city in the same amount, and USI would pick up the difference.

Troy Tornatta: Before we leave, if we can address Self Insurance. That’s one of the papers that you have in front of you. It’s the one that says 4281 Analysis of General Fund Self Insurance Fund. We don’t often deal with the self insurance at this body. It’s been this same cost for the last maybe 15 to 20 years, and it’s been right at $190,000. I think it’s set in the same this year.

Troy Tornatta: $190,550. What I can best describe as utilization of the tools we’ve been given in the past, the Highway Department has picked up about $63,000 in addition to this $190,000 in the Self Insurance Fund, and it’s actual funding number is 4282. We had continued to pull out of 4281 and not 4282. So, 4282 actually has a balance of about $428,000. I think, in the past what we’ve found is gas tax would take care of the highway budget, at some point that would totally take care of the highway budget and we would shove certain amounts into that budget and it would be covered. As we know, we have exceeded the gas tax levy, and we are now pushing into General Fund in the Highway Department. So, I really don’t think it’s, there’s any reason to keep the Highway Department with this Self Insurance Fund, and would just advise the Council to transfer that fund or to pull from that fund until it’s depleted and then put it all into one fund. In addition to that, as you can see on that sheet, over the past ten years we’ve seen a deficit of about $705,000. Obviously, this is due to property and casualty issues, litigation, the receipts are where we’ve done subrogation to bring those dollars back, but you can see the expenses far outweigh what we’ve seen in receipts. Even in 2007, the County Council added to that fund to make sure that it kept the balance above zero. We believe that we’re probably going to have to add to that fund, but maybe one way to do it is to charge those outside offices, outside of the General Fund, per employee and start figuring it on a per employee cost. Obviously, that’s part of the budget, not part of the individual’s cost, but it should be figured on a per person cost. So, in this case, where the Health Department might have, not banging on you, Gary, but where the Health Department might have a certain amount of employees, maybe we charge the Health Department for that and they’ll have to put that in their budget under Self Insurance. Then, we’ll draw from them at some point, and draw from any office that would have employees that would fall under the Self Insurance piece.

Councilmember Raben: We’ve had this similar discussion yesterday on our regular Insurance line item as well, shifting it where we can into other budgets.

Troy Tornatta: I think we’ve pretty well done that on the insurance, it’s just that on the Self Insurance line we’ve not touched that. So, what is recommended in number eight on your analysis sheet is that we’re probably going to have to look at $100,000 boost in Self Insurance. As we’ve seen costs rise, as we’ve seen everything rise, we’ve not put any more into this budget, and we’ve seen a depletion of it, but that’s okay, we still have money in it. For all intents and purposes, if you look at your year-by-year, starting in 2009, we did a focus switch and really put attention to this bill, because this is where we thought that we could draw some attention and potentially save some money. So, in 2009 we came down from $499,000 to $285,000. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is not a magic wand that we waved over it and all of a sudden legal fees went down, this was just an attention to detail. We were able, we had two people that we were paying to do a job, now we’re only paying one. The person that we’re paying the percentage, we just pay them a flat fee of sixty three, $66,000 to do that, and they run the whole legal side of all these claims. So, we just have one person doing it instead of having a couple of people working on it. So, that saved us some money there. Then, we did concentrate on getting some of this litigation taken care of, and taken off the books. We addressed it and so, now, we’ve got more litigation off the books, so, we’ve tackled it pretty intensely. As you see, $231,000 is where we are to date, we just had a claim come in that was pretty substantial to boost that to that level. We think that, you know, we could see another $50,000 or $60,000 still for the end of the year in this piece, but we are trying to stay on top of those issues.

President Lloyd: Questions on that? So, what you’re saying is, line item 3001, boost that $100,000?

Troy Tornatta: Well, figure out how you want to do it. If you want to move the sixty three, in fact, the Highway budget, on page 111–

Troy Tornatta: It has $68,250. I would throw that over into the County Commissioners fund. There’s no real rationale why you would have it over there today. Then, what I would look to do is to potentially look at the Health Department and any other departments that could add to this fund to get to that number.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, but we’re supplementing that with General Fund monies now.

President Lloyd: Right, right, right. Okay, any other....Bill, do you have a thought on that?

Bill Fluty: Well, right now, yes, there is the balance that’s dedicated to the County Highway, but it’s in a cash card. It can, if there’s a shortage in the Commissioners line item, through this body or through direction from this body, that money can be moved into the Commissioners line item. That’s always been a possibility. The claims have been low at the Highway, and that money’s just, we usually let Self Insurance just roll over into the next year. It was kind of a back up if we fell short at any time in the original Commissioners line item. So, it’s always been there, kind of a safety valve, but, obviously, you don’t need that much in the County Highway is, I guess, what you’re saying, and that’s true. So, but it can be changed by this body, if–

Bill Fluty: –right now we’re kind of at zero in the Commissioners line item. So, if any more claims come in, you don’t have the ability to pay, but you do have this money as back up.

Councilmember Kiefer: Are we done with this section? If we are, I had some other questions.

Bill Fluty: You can. Right now, if more claims come in, as Commissioner Tornatta said, and he’s anticipating we’ve got what, five months left in the year, I’m sure they’re not going to have enough money, we can, as soon as one of these come in, you can authorize to move whatever you need over from there. It will be a journal entry, if you would like to do that.

Troy Tornatta: –if there’s a quick reaction we can take it out of the Highway Fund.

Bill Fluty: Remember, it’s, how do I say this, I’m not moving from fund to fund, I’m moving it from a cash card, which is different. So, that’s why I can do it. So, I’m not moving the $62,000, but we can do that.

Troy Tornatta: You can set the $62,000 into ours and zero theirs out for the budget purposes. For future purpose about using the funds I don’t see any reason why if there’s a claim that has to be paid that Bill couldn’t pay that out of the Highway Fund, so you wouldn’t necessarily have to transfer all that money over if you didn’t want to at this time, but to make it cleaner, you would probably want to transfer that money over at some point, if that’s the decision you guys are making.

Councilmember Goebel: Will this offset then the request for $100,000 more on the other line item?

Troy Tornatta: Well, I mean, I’ll just kind of point back to this form and where the trends are. We believe the litigation, as you’ve heard from the Prosecutor and the defense attorneys and probably from Superior Court, you’re going to hear that everything is going up. There’s more litigation, there’s more people trying to sue and to take people to do whatever they’ve got to do to get right. So, in this case, what I’m saying is, the trend from what they’re telling us is it probably needs to be about $100,000 or as close as we can get to it. As you see, with $400,000 we feel like we’ve got a little bit of a buffer there, but that’s all we’ve got. So, we either do it at budget time, or we have to come back to the County Council and ask for a big number.

President Lloyd: Quick question, on page 73, Purchasing Department. Is that working out sufficiently where we have the shared Purchasing? Because, I know, we’re going to, I guess, we’re keeping that same $69,000, that would be the county’s share?

President Lloyd: I mean, is that, as far as you’re concerned, that’s responsive to what you need?

President Lloyd: Okay. Just, I don’t know if you saw it, but we did ask Mr. Arvay to come in yesterday and we had a presentation on the computer, and one of the things that Council’s going to be looking at is funding some of those increases through charging other departments, or charging outside the General Fund, where we can, as well as maybe there’s situations where the State could pick up some of that. So, I mean, we’re cognizant that we’ve got a big issue to deal with there, quite a bit of money, and, I think, they’re not overly satisfied with some of that. I know, you and I have had conversations to that extent.

Troy Tornatta: The Commissioners offer still stands that we would take that line item back.

Troy Tornatta: Yeah, since we sign the contracts and looking at kind of the flow of what we do here, now, it’s not going to change the General Fund, we all know that, but just where that is positioned, it would make more sense since we sign that contract that we throw it in the Commissioners budget, and, then, obviously, the Council would have to approve it. Furthermore, getting us to work ever more closely on this very important item.

President Lloyd: Well, we can take that up with the majority of the Council. Well, you guys can have travel back, do you want that?

Troy Tornatta: You guys get to find out where people are going and how much they’re spending. I think that’s appropriate.

Councilmember Goebel: Troy, on page 73, 3620, the Copy Machine Lease, I noticed that’s gone up a bit, do you have a different company or machine? Line 3620.

Troy Tornatta: Xerox. We had about seven increases over all, and that wasn’t one of them. Are you talking...last year it was the same, and that’s a contractual line item.

Councilmember Goebel: No, I know, it was budgeted last year, I was just looking at the history of it all.

Councilmember Goebel: Well, once again, I’ll make a point that if we went county-wide with a computer leasing program we might, or a copy leasing program or ownership, we might be able to save some substantial amounts.

Councilmember Kiefer: Thank you. Troy, I was wondering on the Rent, on page 73, number 3600, Rent, how is that increase calculated? Although it’s only 3.8 percent, it’s still a big number increase, you know, $182,000 plus increase. How is that Rent increase calculated?

Councilmember Kiefer: Okay, I was just curious, because, you know, our inflation, I mean, I don’t know, our inflation rate is not that high. So, I was just curious how he came up with that number. I would be just interested to know. Then, a follow up question, on the line item 3280, Examination of Records, is this something that just occurs every so many years? Because, I noticed expended 2010 you had $31,000, but you only budgeted 100, and now we’re budgeting 100 again, you know, is that–

Troy Tornatta: Probably, to me it’s kind of like, should be a dollar, and keep the line item open, because there’s no real reason to have $100 sitting in that line item, but, I think, Bill can probably explain more.

Bill Fluty: Examination of Records is a fee that the State Board of Accounts returns to us after they’ve audited either the county, or if they’ve audited the city, we would pay, but then we would get, we would take that back out at settlement. We wouldn’t lose any money. So, right now, we usually put it in at a dollar, then again, it comes off the cash–

Councilmember Kiefer: So, even though we expended $31,505, we will get that money back is what you’re saying?

Bill Fluty: It depends. Now, if that’s a county audit for county, that’s an expense. Now, if it’s the city’s we may pay more, but we would get that reimbursed and that would go back into Miscellaneous Revenues. So, the dollar is just a place holder so we have a place to pay it from is what I’m saying. We would pay that from the cash.

Troy Tornatta: If you’ve done a dollar, I would make it a dollar, instead of $100.

Councilmember Kiefer: No, I’m just curious, because I thought, well, hey, if we needed the money there, you know, I mean, why purposely put in the $100 if you’re going to have to spend $31,000, if it’s something mandatory that you’ve got to spend.

Councilmember Shetler: Are you saying that all of the auditing for the State Board of Accounts, that fee would come through the county first and then we would subrogate back on the party that....I’m thinking of Knight Township right now is what I’m thinking of, has just gone through an extensive audit and appears to not having any money left. So, are we going to be saddled with that?

Bill Fluty: I would say, there is an audit there, and there will be a cost to that audit and it will be sent to us and we’ll pay that, and then we’ll take it back from Knight at a later date, but we always get our money.

Councilmember Shetler: Can they put that on that same credit card they’ve been using?

Bill Fluty: Remember, we give them the money, we distribute the money to them, so, I can always hold it back. So I can assure you, we’ll get our share.

Councilmember Raben: Troy, on Hillcrest Washington, have we looked at the real, the contract recently on that?

Councilmember Raben: Does the county really realize the true value of that for what we pay for it? Are we funding the entire Hillcrest Washington Home for this?

Troy Tornatta: No, no, and, I mean, I understand, Jeff, that’s probably more in line with what you deal with on contracts with the Youth Home.

Troy Tornatta: –here again, I can find out that information and what’s done, but, it seems to me, in the past, we’ve had a State mandated financial obligation to take on that Washington Youth Home, or we wouldn’t have it in the budget. So, that just serves from sitting over here for a few years, but, I can check and see what that is–

Troy Tornatta: – you know, it’s been on the CPI, and, in fact, the past two years we’ve went back to some of these entities and said, relook at your CPI. Do we want to go a negative, because that’s where you’ve been? And, they said, okay just zero it out. So, we’ve tried to stay on top of that.

Councilmember Raben: You know, maybe, and it may be available to the Commissioners office, I don’t know, but, maybe some quarterly or annual reporting. I’m just very curious as to what all services they offer, what we’re spending this much money on, and, you know, I guess, my second question is, is there other counties utilizing their services that possibly we’re footing all of the bill for it?

Councilmember Raben: So, anyway, it’s something to look at. I apologize, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot with that one.

Councilmember Raben: No, it would be part of the rent within this building. Yeah, I’m sure the city and county pay–

Bill Fluty: I believe they’re, it’s broken down between city and county, the rent is. Everybody pays rent for their square footage is how it’s worked.

President Lloyd: If they’re paying, they turn around and bill us, I would assume. I mean, that has to be part of, in their cost.

Troy Tornatta: I guess, what I’m saying is if another company came in this building, would they have to pay rent?

Troy Tornatta: So, I’m just trying to figure out, why, if this is an outside company why they’re not paying rent.

Councilmember Shetler: My guess would be that they, even, I’m not so sure that that’s the most prudent way to do it though, because I’m sure their contract calls for them to up it. So, if they upcharge 15 percent or whatever the cost would be, their expenses, then the county, when we can actually give it at our cost would be paying the 15 percent profit that they’re marking it up. So, I’m not so sure that that would be–

Troy Tornatta: Well, I’m not so sure I’ve ever heard of a business that only has one client, and then we’re paying all of their expenses. I mean, if you’re coming in this building, you know, in this case, I hope you’ve got another gig somewhere, because I don’t know why we’re paying their rent. I mean, you rent from us and you give us the services we require, we’re not saying we’re paying your bills. I mean, that’s–

Councilmember Shetler: I don’t know, that’s a contractual thing, I think that the Commissioners signed and dealt with.

Troy Tornatta: Well, I didn’t sign it, and that’s why I’m not real interested in moving this forward if we don’t have some of these issues under tow.

Troy Tornatta: I don’t want to keep paying more percentage because of their expenses–

Councilmember Shetler: I mean, just, usually contracts like that are, I mean, first of all, Council doesn’t do contracts–

Councilmember Shetler: –I mean, as you know, that’s the Commissioners responsibility.

Councilmember Shetler: But, secondly, most of the contracts that are written like that, usually, you know, it’s on a cost plus basis on those kind of expenses. I would hate to pay them profit on an expense that they’re paying to us. I mean, that part doesn’t make sense to me, but, I hear what you’re saying.

Troy Tornatta: I think, we’re trying to do the same thing. We’re trying to cut costs and find ways to increase revenues. If we can do one of the two, we keep the tax rate as low as possible. That’s also making sure that we have the right vendor in here for the right cost and utilizing their expansiveness to not only have, if we choose to do that here, that’s fine, but my only point is, if we have, if we’re paying 100 percent of their expenses, they’ve got a profit in there somewhere. So, let’s us do it in-house and we’ll be able to return some money back to the taxpayer.

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, that’s a question, I guess, for a different day, but, and that’s precisely my point though is that if they, we charge them $10,000 rent and they have it figured in there to put 15 percent profit on it, then we’re going to put up another $1,500 on top of that $10,000 that’s going to go out the window. I just don’t see any sense in us doing it, if that’s the way the contract’s written. I don’t know. It’s not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to kind of sign the check after you guys have negotiated the contract.

Troy Tornatta: Well, it’s just, as Joe points out about the, you know, how things are figured, I mean, I could tell you we could make some money back on that $150,000 to $180,000 by watching whoever’s in here for rent and charging them rent for what they’re doing. In that case if I can deal with the contract, but it’s going to be a stricter contract that looks at our services, sees what we’re getting and we’re going to pay for those things that we would pay for an outside contractor on a --

– going to pay for all these other fees. I’m sorry we’re the only client that they have, along with the city, but if that’s the case and we’re paying their entire bills, I mean, you see what I’m saying, we could do it on our own.

President Lloyd: Okay, well, I would hope we would take a close look at that before it gets renewed. If you want to ask Mr. Ziemer to send a copy of the contract to Mr. Ahlers, I mean, the Council would be happy to look at it.

Commissioner Tornatta: I would be open to talk about everything. Let me say this, I am not complaining at this point about the services we’re getting. I think the people bust their butts to get the city and the county taken care of. We’re looking at efficiencies and cost measures and this is just one place that we need to entertain those thoughts.

President Lloyd: Before we get out of the Commissioners budget, on your rationale sheet you’ve got 3600, Rent, increase less than one percent. I think Joe calculated and I went and checked it, it’s 3.8 percent.

President Lloyd: Whether that’s also for utilities or whatever, I don’t know, but, anyway, it’s not just one percent. It says a letter from the Building Authority indicated one percent, well–

Commissioner Tornatta: Of course, that was a line item inserted by the Building Authority, and I think Dave Rector could clear that up.

Troy Tornatta: I understand. It wasn’t factored in, but I didn’t think I would have to explain about that.

Councilmember Kiefer: You know, I think yesterday we talked a little bit about it, you know, we have a lot of vacant space, obviously, you know, with either bringing in county, other county offices into a vacant space, or renting that space to private sector if there’s a viable client out there might be worthy of examining. But, anyway, look forward to getting together, I know Ed and I had talked about getting together with either you and Dave Rector and stuff, and we still look forward to doing that, and appreciate you taking the time on that.

President Lloyd: Okay, overall this budget is up $162,000, which is one percent, you know, pretty decent.

Councilmember Raben: Troy, the Commissioners wouldn’t necessarily have a problem if we didn’t entertain their increase and set it at pretty much what this year’s level was?

Troy Tornatta: Yeah, I mean, our duty is to pass along some of these, this information and let you disseminate what things are there. Obviously, we’ll have dialogue, and I always appreciate that, at least I know where you’re coming from on some of these circumstances. I know how tough 2011 will be, the toughest time of the year realizing that property tax caps and some of the things that have pulled away from the county for the, you know, whether it’s State or federal or whatever the situation is. We understand it, we want to try and work as diligently as possible.

Troy Tornatta: I think the only you’ll see in here is a rationale for the Parks and Playground for Burdette Park. Just, I’m sure Steve will rehash this, but in talking to Steve there’s going to be two slides that are going to go down probably in the next couple of years. We’re spending money to try and repair those on a weekly basis, and, I believe they’re 15 or 16 years old. I will tell you, we’ve had conversations with pool, the pool suppliers of equipment and those who do commercial aquatics and to get any type of significant piece in there, you’re looking at a million dollars. So, obviously, none of these are going to touch that, but just to kind of set you up, if we’re going to continue with that aquatic center out there and the level that we’re going to continue, we need to kind of think about how we’re going to address some of these issues.

Troy Tornatta: Well, probably it’s discontinuing that slide and looking at a new attraction in its stead.

Councilmember Raben: You’re saying that’s above and beyond what we have listed here?

Troy Tornatta: Well, I’m just giving you a little forecast, a little vision of what we’re looking at out at Burdette Park. So, if this money, if we choose not to do anything out there, just know that the time’s coming when if we’re going to keep that park at the attraction level that it would stand, we’re going to have to address some of these issues at the aquatic center.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. I’m just looking through some of this, it looks like the filter system, is that priority? Is that something that needs to happen by business year 2011?

Steve Craig: Steve Craig, Manager of Burdette Park. James, on that, two years ago we replaced one of our major filter systems on our swimming pools, it had rusted through the filters from inside out. The other side at that time was not in that bad of shape. We did rebuild that one and put new sand in it at a minimal cost for the price of it, but I see it going out in the next year or two also. What this is pooled up with is the cost of it, IDEM did an audit on the county this year, and the way that we’re set up probably is not kosher at this time, and we’re wanting to address this situation. We are grandma claused in because the pool is fifty something years old, but if we put this new filter system in, then we just need to tie everything up together and do it, you know, according to the way we should be doing it now.

Councilmember Raben: Maybe because there’s so many items, maybe we need to prioritize these as we go through them. So, as an example, in the filtration system, where would that be in your list of priorities?

Councilmember Raben: Okay. On the next item, anyone stop me if they have other questions, on the next item on the floating animals–

Steve Craig: That goes back to Troy brought up a point, if we’re going to keep that facility operating like it is, you know, this is something that, these are 10-12 years old, they’re wore out. We didn’t even use one of them this year, but when we keep this facility up to its operations, we bring money in. You know, I’m one of the few departments, I hope to turn back $900,000 to the county this year, but to turn $900,000 of my budget back to the county I have to take care of what I got. If we start cutting back on stuff like this, and then, I, you know, see where the income starts going back because we no longer have the nice facility we had before. So, it’s one of these things, you make an investment, you know, we have a lot of kids in there. I think it’s important.

Steve Craig: You can throw the pick up truck out, if somebody’s got one that’s useable. I have about six vehicles right now that are surplus, but, we haven’t bought a truck. We’ve got one pick up truck we’ve bought in 14 years.

Steve Craig: –that we use for maintenance, but we can’t take them to town. We get to the part where the vehicles that I’ve got, after they, you know, I’ve got six of them that were surplus, had six departments come in and convince you guys, those weren’t road worthy and then they were handed to us to use. So, you know, that’s the position I’m in. I’m just looking at every once in a while I need–

Troy Tornatta: And they are rough. I mean, if you’ve been out there, not every door matches.

Councilmember Raben: Number four, would that, where does that stand, would that now be your third priority?

Councilmember Raben: That would be your number three. Okay. The tennis court crack and refill?

Steve Craig: I would say that’s there too, because we have heavy use on our tennis courts and that, and the maintenance of a tennis court is they get cracks in them and that and you have to fill them and resurface them. I think it’s been six, seven years since we’ve did that one, but the cracks are getting wider, as the winter goes through and you get water in them it just, it’s one of those progressive things with asphalt.

Councilmember Bassemier: Steve, is that just, excuse me, Steve, is that just for the materials? Because you can do that in-house, or the County Highway could probably do that tennis court.

Steve Craig: That’s total price of somebody doing it. They, you know, they come in and clean them all out and cut them and, you know, I had a company come out and give me an estimate of what it would be. They go through every crack in there and cut them, clean them, then they fill them–

Councilmember Bassemier: Well, I know you’ve got a lot of skillful guys out there at the County Highway, could that be a possibility that they could do it?

Steve Craig: There’s a possibility we could do that. I mean, I’ll look into it, as long as we get it done. We can repaint it, I have no problems with that, you know, once it would be done, but I can go through the County Highway if they’ve got time and that. I know they have the machine, they redo my roads every year.

President Lloyd: Okay, let’s keep the questions to CCD. Are you finished, Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Shetler: A question on that tennis court, this is a suggestion, have you checked with the, what is it the Evansville Tennis Association or something? I know they took over the courts out at Wesselman’s and they redid them. They had a fund drive, they redid them, and I think they have kind of, I don’t want to say ownership, but they have a lease agreement or something with the Parks Department of Evansville and the, I guess, it’s city-county Parks Department, but you might want to check into those folks and see if they would be interested in taking that on. Maybe that would relieve us of the liability.

Steve Craig: I can do that also. I don’t know, I always kind of like to take care of my own stuff, but–

Steve Craig: OPM’s not bad. The last one, James, I guess, you’ve got it on the list, the reason that I did have it last, I just had a meeting with Structurepointe, and we had purchased 30 acres through the Evansville Visitors and Convention Bureau several years ago and we’ve been going through an on-going study with them on what we need to do with the infrastructure and that to prepare this property to be a viable part of the park in the next, you know, ten years or so. The first thing that they came up that they suggested that we do was to put in a retention lake across from our offices. That was dual purpose, at the present time our offices, I’ve had water in them there in the last several years and we have a bad problem with flooding, not necessarily from the river, but from runoff flooding, and when they went and did the study on the new 30 acres, the reason they gave us was that this water is coming out of these valleys way too fast. Years ago there used to be a retention lake there, it was removed for reasons that I don’t know, but, it was, they came back and told us if we needed to do anything, you know, to pursue and to progress with this 30 acres, was that we needed to put this retention lake in. They honestly think that will cause, or cure the problem of the offices flooding, because the lake would fill up and let the water off slowly. That’s what it’s designed for. I just had a meeting with them, and we do have the drawings for it and everything, so, basically, it would be ready for bid. But, they said that it will cure most of our storm water flooding.

President Lloyd: Any other questions on CCD? Alright, thank you...or, Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Not on those projects, but on the next page on the chalet.

Councilmember Shetler: Is it possible to get for us a, how many chalets do you have now that you’re renting?

Councilmember Shetler: Six? That you could get a list of those, and how much income they’re bringing in on a weekly, monthly, yearly basis so we can just see if that $200,000 is a worthwhile investment?

President Lloyd: Let’s go to 1260, Drainage Board, which is page 69. Any questions on Drainage Board? It’s a flat budget. It’s not very big.

President Lloyd: Okay, if not we’ll move on to 1490, Riverboat, which is page 110. We have a detailed list of expenditures there. Questions on Riverboat? Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, I’m going to start off on the Economic Development, is it the GAGE, the money to help out with GAGE, is that in Economic Development on that top line there?

Councilmember Shetler: I have some serious reservations on that, I guess, from the standpoint that, you know, I guess, we, we’re putting up the cash there. I’m not seeing the city, they’re kind of doing in-kind services and trade outs and stuff, and, yet, we’re supplementing, you know, one of their directors by the tune of $30,000 out of that fund. I have some real issues with that. It seems that most of the activities that have been taking place out of the GAGE have been things that traditionally were done by the City of Evansville; downtown revitalization, Freedom Festival, that was done by a totally outside, independent volunteer group that was very successful for years, the Thunder on the Ohio, things like that that were traditionally done by other groups, and now we’ve taken up the burden of that, particularly financially. I just don’t know if we’re getting our money’s worth. I have real reservations about sticking that much money into this.

Troy Tornatta: The liaison, at one point I was the liaison to that group, and Councilman Winnecke was for this body. I’m sure you got reports back from him, positive or negative. Since Councilman Winnecke is Commissioner Winnecke, only one of us can serve on that board, and because he has ties to Fifth Third as well, he is serving a dual interest, yet I still have not heard any negative activity from him, and would only say that, you know, if you have a question on any of the activity, either this liaison for this body or ask Commissioner Winnecke. He might be able to at least give you a heads up on the direction. It was my understanding that all of the money that was paid to the DMD director was paid out of separate city funds, and supplemented by the city in addition to what they gave. If that has changed, that has since changed since I have been off that board.

Councilmember Shetler: I don’t, I could be wrong on that, but I’m thinking that the city’s contribution is all in-kind. It is a trade out, you talked about rent a few moments ago, that GAGE pays no rent on the city owned building, and that trade out of that is the city’s contribution, along with a few other trade outs that they’ve made on some other properties and other things that they’re doing, but as far as actual cash outlay they have no responsibility on that at all. That’s borne by private businesses contributing and our $150,000 contribution then.

Troy Tornatta: Okay, and I was not aware of that, but I will check back with Commissioner Winnecke and see where he comes out on the answer to that question.

President Lloyd: I mean, I guess, if you want to boil it down, the question is, does the county receive any benefit from GAGE for that $150,000? I mean, just as an observer, not on that board, I would question that.

Troy Tornatta: I, the only thing, and this is how it was started, now, where the focus is now might be a little more skewed, where it started with Joe Wallace was bringing the incubators in. He brought in Crane for some of their, to put the incubator in, the Crane incubator so that we could have some of their patents and try and move those on into business. So, I mean, there were some definite qualities of that that I think benefitted Vanderburgh County.

President Lloyd: Right, if you’re talking about growing businesses and high tech businesses, but somehow they’ve gotten away from that, and, I just question the county’s payment there that it doesn’t, to me it doesn’t seem to have any benefit to the county.

Troy Tornatta: The good thing about this process, obviously, we’ve got a couple weeks to talk about it, and we’ve got a few more weeks before we’ll have to set it. So, we’re open, and willing to talk about it, and, in this case I would defer you to Commissioner Winnecke, but I’m sure we can talk about it on the Commission floor and get the (Inaudible).

President Lloyd: Let me ask a quick technical question, have we paid GAGE for 2010?

President Lloyd: –I was told that we gave them a check at the beginning of the year for the whole year.

Councilmember Kiefer: Yeah. I thought they showed, because I sit on that board, I was appointed, and I thought I saw in one of their financial reports that they either submitted a bill or they were paid. They’re influx, they don’t have a director now, and they, so, they have had some concerns. I think to address Tom’s concerns, I know that they have abandoned or are abandoning the events type projects and trying to narrow their focus down to helping small, you know, the small businesses, where Greg Wathen’s group would then focus more on some of the larger groups. But, I do know they have asked Greg Wathen to join the board, or I think they have, you know, so they can get some more input inside on how to better focus.

President Lloyd: Maybe Bill Fluty can check on that and just see if the county paid them for 2010.

Councilmember Kiefer: Yeah, that’s what I thought. I thought I remembered seeing it on one of their financial reports.

Troy Tornatta: Obviously, their focus now is if you’re not going to make a nickel, you’re not going to have an event.

Councilmember Kiefer: Right, that’s some of the things they’re trying to do. I think they’re trying to refocus.

Councilmember Kiefer: You known, probably the best guy to have come in here would be Dan Bugher–

Councilmember Kiefer: –he works at Vectren. He was the president of the board, so he would probably be the best guy to come in and answer questions.

President Lloyd: Well, and these are all in the Economic Development line item, that’s why these questions are being batted around.

President Lloyd: Economic Development Coalition, I attend those board meetings and that’s regional development of trying to recruit businesses, and, I mean, I can see the value of that, but, I just question the value of what we’re getting for the GAGE. Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: You know, and I’m just kind of piggybacking on the fact that what we’ve reported earlier is the fact that the COIT money is going to be two and a half million dollars short–

Councilmember Shetler: – so, we have to look at two and a half to three million dollars. That means every fund that we have sitting out there that before appeared to be some kind of a cash cow available for, you know, dealing with projects and stuff, we need to look hard at–

Councilmember Shetler: –restricting those and cutting some of those back and stuff. So, otherwise, you know, we will have to lay off people, and it would have to be laid off in necessary services as well. So, I mean, it’s, other than the fact that I’m not seeing our value for our investment being utilized there, but I also feel that we’ve got to cut back here too as well, and use this money for some other departments perhaps.

Councilmember Bassemier: This might be a question for Mr. Heck, but on that Dental Clinic, now that grants ran out, right? For, was that, they were paying $80,000, or St. Mary’s was paying part on that grant, help me out here.

Troy Tornatta: Well, do you want to....are there anything, is there anything between, because we’re jumping down to Dental Clinic, do we need to talk about any of the others, or can we jump down there?

President Lloyd: Riverboat, the Dental Clinic has a line item in Riverboat, let’s just take Dental Clinic right now.

Troy Tornatta: Okay, alright. Essentially what the hospitals bought in, and that’s when Royce and Councilman Royce Sutton and Councilman Winnecke were working on this package. They went to St. Mary’s and to Deaconess and got their buy in. Since that time, they were told, it’s much like a grant that we’ve seen in the past from federal or state or whatever, and they will go away. They’ve been preparing for this to go away at some point and for us to pick up the slack. It was roughly $40,000 per group to pick that up, and, so, that’s kind of where we are right now. We have raised our service fees, we’re trying to do this in a way that is going to make sure that we keep as many people as healthy as possible to try and lower the overall costs, but–

Councilmember Bassemier: Oh, I think it’s great, I mean, it’s a wonderful program, but, I was just kind of thinking, I wasn’t on the Council at the time–

Councilmember Bassemier: –but, I remember St. Mary’s, I mean, everybody was for this.

Councilmember Bassemier: But, has anybody asked them to go ahead and take over where the grant no longer covers?

Troy Tornatta: Well, you know, not to put words in any hospital’s mouth, but the thing that they see is, they don’t know if they’re seeing a decrease in the individuals walking into their emergency rooms. That’s what we have to be able to show that we’re decreasing those amounts, and, unfortunately, I think, it’s just getting worse. You have more people that utilize the system because of just assistance needs, and they need to have that work done, and now they have a conduit to get that work done. They have to go through the process with the Dental Clinic, and it’s, I mean, this is not come on in and sit in a chair we’re going to crank a couple of things and get out of here. I mean, they run them through, they’re getting information from them, they set them up appointments, they have to go back and hit that appointment if they’re not first up in the chair and that can all be explained, you know–

Councilmember Bassemier: The point I’m trying to make is, you know, we think it’s important enough and we’re going to fund it with Riverboat–

Councilmember Bassemier: –it seems like to me, and they know it’s a good program, and I’m sure they’ve got more funding than we have, why don’t they help us out here?

Troy Tornatta: In fact, they have people on the Dental Clinic board. So, you know, it’s out there, it’s just not hitting their budgets, and I think that they’re looking at their costs and how they’re doing business as well.

Troy Tornatta: So, much like Tom said about GAGE, I don’t know if they’re seeing the benefit of it to fund at that level, although we can explain where that benefit’s coming from–

President Lloyd: But, what you’re saying is for the hospitals, people aren’t coming in there with toothaches or mouth problems? They can’t measure that in the emergency rooms?

President Lloyd: The Dental Clinic hasn’t stopped the volume in the emergency rooms.

Troy Tornatta: I mean, it could be 30 or 50 percent higher if we didn’t have the Dental Clinic.

Councilmember Kiefer: Just one of my concerns on the Dental Clinic has always been servicing outside of Vanderburgh County. Are we still providing dental service to folks outside of Vanderburgh County?

Troy Tornatta: There is a small percentage. I will defer that to Gary Heck when he comes up here. Have you already (Inaudible)? Where is Gary? Have you done–

Councilmember Kiefer: I mean, I know there’s a sliding scale or something like that, but I just, I would like anybody outside of Vanderburgh County to pay full cost. Either that or we need to contact those counties and see if they want to participate in our program, you know, so we can get–

Councilmember Kiefer: Okay, that’s just, I just hate Vanderburgh County paying for people outside of Vanderburgh County.

Troy Tornatta: We’ve talked about that. They’re looking into that and they’re very much aware of that situation.

Councilmember Shetler: What’s the total revenue that we receive off the Riverboat annually? Maybe that’s a question for Bill?

Councilmember Shetler: No, the total revenue that we receive from Riverboat, not the expense.

Councilmember Shetler: $2.2 million? Are there any restrictions on that fund as far as what it can be used for?

Councilmember Shetler: It can be used for operational or capital or whatever this Council would desire to use it for?

Bill Fluty: It is really General Fund money. So, you could use it for anything you would like.

Troy Tornatta: Tom, how this is worked out, and the way that this board set it up when they got that money was that we were going to keep it out of the General Fund usage, however, one could do anything they want to especially in tough times, but the movement of that money was to never rely on it as a General Fund mechanism. Therefore, if there was ever a pullout, to conservatively say that if it went away, just some of these programs would go away, not the reliance of the General Fund. That’s how it was set up, just background.

Councilmember Terry: My question is on the Initiative Based Assistance program, just looking at history, I think this year’s what is being proposed is lower than it’s ever been. Can you kind of give me a little bit of background of why such a large decrease there?

Troy Tornatta: The Commissioners looked at the program that has been running for a period of time and it has several components, one of the components would be child care, one of the components would be a safety net and a vehicle--

Troy Tornatta: –fix up mechanism. The vehicle fix up part is about $23,000, the, obviously, the lion’s share of that goes to the child care side, and we do think it’s important, but we have been entertaining doing something on a bus route, and we believe both are very important to our community. The problem is, as we’ve alluded to several times, the budgets are tight, we don’t have that type of money to throw around. So, we sat down with Lieberman and Associates and their board that talks about, and a very educated board, and they talked about the child care side and how much they spend in child care, there are some inconsistencies and we, I wanted to address with them, you know, if they only get one year on assistance, and that’s to try and boost them to get their job, to get their finances in line in that one year to try and make a go of it. Part of it is child care and there’s not, there’s not a line for child care that’s equal from one person to another. One person can choose that they want to spend a higher rate, and they’re going to pay for that, or if one person chooses to spend a lower rate, they’re going to pay for that. My question was, in year number two when they weren’t on the service, were they spending $80 a week and on year number three when they weren’t on the service are they spending $180 a week, and then year number four did they go back to $80. So, my question is only this, knowing that $97 is an average fee on child care with their numbers, maybe they only fund $75 out of that fee, putting a $20 or $25 or $30 weekly stipend on the individual that wants to take that out. Still making sure that they can, that it’s very affordable to take care of their children, and that would save, pull that money back that we spent considerably and then we would have more money to put in the transportation side.

Councilmember Kiefer: Troy, does that program, do they pay that money directly to the recipient, or do they pay the bill directly to the daycare?

Troy Tornatta: To the daycare with a voucher. I mean, they have a voucher that they have from that daycare–

Troy Tornatta: –and they, I would assume they go through all of the accreditation processes to make sure–

Councilmember Kiefer: How, and is the voucher system the same thing for auto repair–

Councilmember Kiefer: –and everything? So, they’re not actually putting cash in the hands of the recipients?

Troy Tornatta: No, it’s a voucher that comes, for instance, if we get something that comes to us after there have been three submittals, now, on the car side there’s three submittals, I don’t know if it’s the same for child care which is, here again, a little bit of an issue.

Troy Tornatta: But, there’s three submittals, and those submittals come back and whoever gets the job–

Troy Tornatta: –and I think it pays up to $775 per incident, or per car for one time, and that’s it.

Councilmember Kiefer: So, does Lieberman, do they track these people after they have used them to see–

Councilmember Kiefer: –you know, later did they find a job? Or, I mean, is there any success that can be measured to say, hey, we spent “x” amount and this is the success that’s come from it? You know, 95 percent have gotten jobs because of our work, or is it just purely a welfare program?

Troy Tornatta: Very good question. I asked essentially the same question, what were they doing before with child care, what did they do during child care, what did they do after child care and how is the success of continuing the service just with the children? I think the same question needs to be asked just overall how the program served the people and what the exit rate is and how successful it is. So, we’ve started it. We haven’t gotten that far yet, because we know child care is the biggest number of what we’re spending.

Councilmember Kiefer: I wonder if it would work better, I mean, of course, Lieberman could explore this, but maybe just contract with one vendor, you know, like St. Vincent’s or somebody that has a well known, exceptionally good program and maybe give better discounts.

Troy Tornatta: I think the problem is they’re so full and it’s proximity. I mean, if a person is on the far east side and they have to come downtown, that’s more of an issue, you know, to spend that time. No, I mean, I think we’re open for anything.

President Lloyd: When you look at this, so the welfare to work was basically cut $250,000, $100,000 went to Dental Clinic, $150,000 to Transportation Service. I mean, that’s what was done in the Riverboat budget.

Troy Tornatta: If, you know, here again, this is a time when we need to talk and tweak and make sure that we have the numbers in the right spaces. I’ve asked for Lieberman to get that back to us so we can have a better look at what their needs would be if they kind of tweaked their program a little bit, and, so, hopefully, we can get this all back so we have a better number for closing the budget.

Councilmember Bassemier: –Troy, that’s probably one of my questions you just answered, but, the administrative costs, you’re cutting it one, seventy thousand, down to $170,000 for the total, do you remember what the administrative costs was and what do you think it’s going to be now?

Councilmember Bassemier: Okay, I know, Joe’s right, at one time we tried to get, you know, have a meeting with them in here at the Council, but it never happened. So, anyway.

Councilmember Shetler: Just, real quickly, it seems to me that the Commissioners, to me it’s kind of the responsibility maybe to give the direction to Lieberman to set the criteria on those disbursements though.

Councilmember Shetler: Rather than them just...because you said it was, in some cases it was at $80 and some cases $180 a month, it just seems to me that you guys would level the playing field here and set the criteria, that that would be your responsibility to do that.

Troy Tornatta: Yeah, and we’ve actually taken that to task, but we have to have more information. So, we’ve sent it back to them to go to the drawing board and give us information. If they can’t do that, then we’ll have to set it without that knowledge. Now, that’s a slippery slope, so, I would rather have the knowledge in hand before I try and work on how their programs are going. But, I mean, we’ve found out that morsel of information, I think we’ve got to address it, and that’s what we’re saying right now. It’s probably a thing where more people are going to have a little bit of skin in the game, and they’re not going to be 100 percent tuition. Or, if they are, they have to find that child care at that level. That’s the onus on them.

President Lloyd: Okay, we need to keep going. To finish this, we’ve got the people from CAJE here, they’re supporting the transportation. If you want to stand, so we could recognize. Those that are for the north side bus route please stand so the Council can see. Okay, thank you, appreciate you coming. Let’s move on to, well, Dental Clinic, any other questions on that, page 130? If not, we’ll move to Burdette Park, page 101.

President Lloyd: No, let’s just get the Commissioners done, and then we can do Health Department. Burdette Park, we’ve had some conversation on that. I guess, one point of order, Steve, you had mentioned $900,000 coming back to the county, but to get that $900,000 we’re spending $1.4 million. So, it’s not like it’s $900,000 and it doesn’t cost us anything. Page 101, Burdette Park, any questions?

Steve Craig: I would like to, I don’t know if this is appropriate right now, but I would like to make a cut to my own budget.

President Lloyd: Okay, that is always appropriate. We encourage that of all presenters. So, which line item?

Steve Craig: It’s the other employees, 1100-1450, account number. The reason I’m doing this is when they did the minimum wage, two years ago they raised it from $5.85 to $7.25, and at that time we took the amount of hours that we had in the park for seasonal and part time help and it came up to about 72,000 hours and figuring at $1.40 a person, that’s a little bit over $100,000 that we were automatically going to have to raise everyone’s wages. So, at that time I had no idea where we were going to come up with $100,000, which I’ve not come back to you guys yet for money to cover that, and we made several cuts in several different areas of the park. I talked to all of my department heads about cutting back on their staff, without jeopardizing safety issues at the aquatic center, the EMT’s , the day camp, and at the beginning of this year when it went to seven and a quarter and we sat down and did this I had no idea how much I was going to need, but at the present time it looks like that we’re going to get, come in at a lot lower than adding $50,000 to it. My department heads did a good job with their cuts and cut back on personnel, and I would like to take it back to $500,000 as a request right now.

President Lloyd: Okay, in line item 1180-1450, the request is changed to $500,000, knock $25,000 off.

Councilmember Raben: Steve, how many full time/part time people are working into a year?

Steve Craig: I probably, I think we’ve got it down to about 12 or 13, but you have to take a look that some of them might only work eight hours a week, or 16 hours a week, or they might be on call. I have people that’s been with me for 10 or 12 years that I only call them when I need them and they come in when we have big events or something. But, I know where we’re going with this, and most of the people, I probably have four or five that get a full day’s or a full week’s pay, work five days, six or seven hours a day, but outside of that they’re just part time people that we use as needed. A lot of them are college kids that go to USI, come in and work on weekends, stuff like that.

Steve Craig: I would say that was about right, that are steady five days a week.

Councilmember Raben: And they’re, what are they doing? Just a lot of general stuff?

Steve Craig: Well, yeah, one of them oversees the housekeeping, other ones are maintenance people that works with my maintenance men. One of the things I got, my four employees all get six weeks vacation, being that they don’t take any of it during the summer, most of the vacation is taken during the winter. Down to two people a lot of times during the day, but they do general maintenance, firewood, splitting of the wood, just general maintenance in the park. They do help with repairs with my full time employees.

Steve Craig: I think there’s five of them or six, I don’t know, it’s somewhere, I would have to sit down and take....I have, you know, several of them that work year round, but they’re not–

President Lloyd: Anything else, Jim? Other questions on Burdette Park? This budget, on page 104, the increase would be $85,000, subtract $25,000 based on what Mr. Craig said, $60,637 increase, that’s 4.3 percent. Big budget. Okay, I think we’ve talked about Burdette. Let’s move on to 1440, the Centre, page 100. Thanks, Steve.

Councilmember Shetler: Since the question was brought up earlier about the computer folks on paying rent, do you guys pay rent, SMG, to the Centre?

President Lloyd: Other questions? For 2010 how are our revenues? I know, you’ve come to us before and we’ve had pretty favorable reports.

Darren Stearns: We’re more inclined with our 2008 numbers than we are with 2009. 2009 was a very good year, so, we’re pushing along, we’re a little bit short on the conventions that we’ve had for 2009. That being said, we are probably seven to eight more shows put into the theater itself to try to help offset that compared to what we had last year. I think we had 18 shows, and, I think, we’re up to 25 this year.

President Lloyd: Do you know roughly what the year-to-date revenues are? A rough number.

Darren Stearns: Through June, or, let’s see, we’re up to July now, I don’t have the, of course, August numbers, up through July we’re probably in the revenue-wise of around 1.2.

Darren Stearns: Well, what we did was we just put a bigger, wider net out for something. We’re looking for anything we can to offset that.

Darren Stearns: Some of them, and some of them are different. We’ve got a six show Broadway season this year. We’ve added some more of the family shows, we’ve got three different family shows this year compared to other local ones. So, yes, some of them are, we do have some shows that have not been attended very well.

Councilmember Goebel: Okay, well, I would hope that you would promote as many as possible, because it seems like there is an appetite.

Darren Stearns: Correct, so, the way we would do that is we work with local promoters, because, of course, we don’t risk any of the county’s money. So, we have to find a promoter that will bring the show. So, that makes it a little bit more difficult, but we’re working on it.

Councilmember Kiefer: Darren, do you guys have some kind of measuring, like occupancy factor, like, you know, how often is it occupied? What percent is it occupied with events throughout the year versus other communities of our size? You know, like are we, you know, booked 75 percent of the time? Whereas, the other communities of our size might be only booked 60 percent? I mean, I don’t know what the numbers are, I’m just throwing something out, but how do you measure your success ration on bookings and the percentage, you know, of your total space available?

Darren Stearns: – with our reports to the County Commissioners is we will give the number of events we’ve had for the month and the event days. The thing that will be difficult to do, and we’ve done it in years past as far as other buildings is we can do event days, but their event days might be different than ours in that their event day is one meeting room, like Walnut A, where our event day might be the entire exhibit hall is booked.

Councilmember Kiefer: Yeah, but, I guess, what I’m trying to get at is total potential, you know, 365 days, total potential and total square footage available, how much of that is occupied? You know, I mean, you couldn’t book, you know, 400 days, because there’s not that many days, you know, so, I mean, you know, and you couldn’t book so much square footage because there’s a limited amount. I’m just trying to get at is there a measurement that shows, hey, we have “x” amount of square footage and “x” amount of days, out of that we’re 70 percent booked.

Darren Stearns: No, we have not done it that way before. I mean, it could be done that way. We would take the square footage, and, like you said, the 365 days, other than what holidays that we are closed–

Councilmember Kiefer: I mean, I would like to see how we stack up against other communities of our size. You know, there’s got to be other communities that we can measure against to how we’re performing versus–

Darren Stearns: Oh, I know, I’m sure, and we can look into that. I guess, like I said, my only, not necessarily concern is, I don’t know if that’s the way that they actually are figuring out their occupancy rates as well.

Darren Stearns: It might be on event days, or square footage per year type of event. I mean, so it would be apples to apples, I don’t know if they would do it that way.

Councilmember Kiefer: There’s probably some kind of industry standard. I just don’t know what it is.

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, do you have staff, or someone on staff, that sells to conventions?

Councilmember Shetler: Are they finding any difficulty with the lack of a hotel associated with the facility today?

Darren Stearns: Yeah, it makes it more difficult. I’m sure it does for the CVB. The way our contract works actually with the Centre is we are responsible for booking meetings and conventions 18 months and in, the CVB is the lead on chasing events 18 months and out for conventions. In which case they’ll go out and bring back an RFP for us to work with them on and see about bringing the convention in. So, we don’t have a lot of, we’re not searching for a lot of the bigger conventions because they’re usually, as you know, if you’ve been to them, are decided way more than 18 months out, but then they would bring it back to us as far as an offering on it. I do know that the CVB has been trying to help with bussing, as far as if we can bring them in and bus them from the hotels, but, you know, that’s just a, it’s a logical thing that they’re going to want to stay as close to where their meeting is as possible.

Councilmember Shetler: And, on the rent, on those meeting rooms and stuff that we have over there, do we comp those at all, ever?

Troy Tornatta: I haven’t seen any, not unless there’s been, if there’s been a county or city use we will allow the city to use, I think they use it for some of their police training. We’ll allow them to do that. If the Sheriff’s Department wants to hold an inauguration or, you know, bring some officers up to the Sheriff’s Department, we’ve allowed them to do that. Unless it’s a city-county use, to my knowledge we haven’t comped anything for anybody.

Troy Tornatta: Let me say this, there have been, as far as some bigger events, Girls in Bloom we’ve comped, but for the boys side we comped the Boy Scouts. So, we were trying to keep parity between some of the groups, but their food and their draw was such that their food bill was going to be substantial.

President Lloyd: Any other questions on this? While we’ve got Darren up here let’s go to Convention Center Operating Fund, page 161.

President Lloyd: That’s basically a flat budget. I guess, my question would be Utilities, are we going to come in, is the $450,000 sufficient? Or, is that, how does that look compared to ‘10?

Darren Stearns: Well, what we did was when we budgeted for ‘10, it looks like we’re going to be a little bit under–

Darren Stearns: – for ‘10, so, that’s why we were comfortable leaving it alone for 11. Mr. Rector gave us our gas estimate, so, we feel pretty comfortable with that.

President Lloyd: Okay, that’s good news. Any other questions on this? Alright, thank you very much. Superintendent of County Buildings, page 81.

Troy Tornatta: I probably could have sat down. Everything’s pretty flat. The one thing that we have seen is an increase in occupancy of the Old Courthouse. We have hired somebody in in that place to try and fill the thing, and it’s at 70 percent occupancy right now. Revenues somewhere in the range of $150,000 for the year, and could be a little stronger if they had been in there a whole year. So, we think we’re seeing at least a $20,000 increase year over year. So, we feel like we’re paying a few more bills over there.

President Lloyd: That’s good news. Any questions on the Superintendent of County Buildings? There was a nice write up in the newspaper about the renovation of the courtrooms.

President Lloyd: Any questions? Okay, well, we’re done with that one. Do you, are you doing Veterans Administration or not? Oh, he’s here.

Councilmember Bassemier: Troy, could you get with Dave Rector, I know he was just here and set up a kind of a meeting in reference to the old jail and how we can, I think we’ve only had one meeting and Joe and I would like to meet with you and Rector and see what we can, how we can renovate the old jail.

Troy Tornatta: Well, originally, I think, I was on that, and had talked to Joe about using his expertise in the real estate business to try and see what the use could be for that facility. I think, Commissioner Melcher might have wanted to serve on there. So, he took that on. What we’re finding right now is there’s a little bit of issue with a company coming in and having everybody screened and whatever and is that an impediment on their business. There’s $500,000 worth of tax free bonds this Council would have to pay off before we could enter into any agreement with anybody from the outside. We talked to the city, the city wants no more space. We as a county, in talking to Councilman Raben, believe that we could use the space that we have occupied right now to do what we need to do. Now, are there some outside things, as far as outside county businesses, we don’t think that there’s really any outside county businesses that we would benefit from moving into that space. So, to renovate anything right now before we know who the end user is going to be might be building just to tear down and build over again. So, we’ve got it cleared out, we believe that we’re prepared if somebody wants to come in, we’ll activate that measure and put them into the building, but I don’t think we need to spend anymore money up there in that space, but there are some things that are outside of this building for storage and what not, I mean, if we’re cutting some corners or cutting some dollars we need to entertain. So, I know that might not be what everyone wants to do, but it’s something that should be on the table.

Councilmember Bassemier: You know, that’s what I want the meeting about, to see what kind of a tenant we could get in here.

Troy Tornatta: Yeah, right now, we’ve searched and there’s just not a big appeal for that space for an outside tenant, but we’re still looking, but, maybe we could use, we have, I’m sure in other areas we have record storage that we can entertain.

President Lloyd: Okay. Thank you. One point on the Riverboat, I made a factual misstatement, GAGE does calculate our tax abatements and they do our compliance on tax abatements. I see Pam Martin back there, that reminded me. They do do that for the county, as well as the city. So, that is a needed service. Okay, I think we’re done with the Commissioners.

President Lloyd: Mrs. Deig wanted to know when the GAGE payment was made. She’ll provide that copy. We’re going to do Veterans Administration and then we’re going to take a five minute break. So, Mr. Ball is here, if we could do his budget real quick, page 70.

President Lloyd: Any questions for Mr. Ball, Veterans Administration? We’ve got a decrease in this budget, I guess, related to, we’ve had some personnel changes.

Jay Ball: Right. I think the issue, you know, we’re still wanting to hire the Secretary/Clerk Typist.

President Lloyd: Excuse me, you’ve got $40,000 in Burial Allowance, is that going to be sufficient?

Jay Ball: It has been in the past, but, you know, as the veterans are aging, especially the World War II and Korean veterans, hopefully, it will be enough. It’s going to be plenty this year it looks like.

Jay Ball: Well, the county gives $100 towards the burial and $100 towards the setting of a marker.

President Lloyd: Any questions for Mr. Ball? Okay, I guess, the Council is satisfied with your budget.

Jay Ball: I mean, if we have to consider part time, we would, but, you know, we’re still coming in at like nine percent under our last year’s budget with that being a full time job.

Councilmember Goebel: Yeah, and that is noticeable. We appreciate that, but that position is not filled at this point?

President Lloyd: I guess, that kind of brings up, just briefly, what are some of the duties that you guys have over there?

Jay Ball: Well, our main thing right now is filing disability claims for veterans. When you see the backlog, I don’t know if you read the backlog in the VA system, we’re filing hundreds of claims for the returning Iraqi and Afghanistan veterans, pension claims for older veterans. It’s something, it’s always been there, but it’s a Catch-22 now with the assisted living and nursing homes. You probably see these ads in the paper for assisted living talking about veteran’s benefits. It’s very time consuming and the paperwork to do them.

President Lloyd: I mean, mainly with the federal government? Those are the ones–

Councilmember Goebel: Well, we certainly appreciate the job you do, and the services, unfortunately, are more needed now, probably, than any recent time.

President Lloyd: Any other questions for Mr. Ball? Okay, thank you very much for coming in.

President Lloyd: We’re going to take a five minute recess. We’ll start up again at quarter till and we’ll start with the Health Department.

President Lloyd: I would like to reconvene the 2011 Vanderburgh County budget hearings. We’re moving to 2130, Health Department, page 125. We have Mr. Gary Heck here, the Administrator. Any questions on the Health Department? You had, Gary, you’d indicated that you had some savings you wanted to bring to the Council’s attention.

Gary Heck: I do, the only thing in our budget that I would like to, there are only two line items that we have asked for an increase, and those are based on contractual arrangements. One of them is account 3000, the Bond and Insurance, and on the advice and recommendation of the Old National Insurance consultant, they advised us to use eight percent as an increase, which would cover the increased cost in the property, general liability, professional liability and our auto insurance. That’s an eight percent increase. So, that’s an additional $9,948, based on that recommendation. Then, the only other line item that we’ve requested an increase is in account 3600, the Rent–

Gary Heck: –and this is based on, our lease arrangement is made with Southwestern Behavioral Healthcare, formerly Southwestern Mental Health Center, and it’s based on the Consumer Price Index all urban consumers, non-seasonally adjusted, and it’s the September rate that’s published in October. Looking, last year there was actually a decrease, and our rent was actually decreased last year. Based on the activity so far this year, in January it was 2.5 percent, February it was 2.0, so, we’ve been sort of tracking right at the two, two point two percent increase. So, we’re, without having a crystal ball to know exactly what it’s going to be, we’re projecting a 2.276 percent increase.

President Lloyd: You know, at the Health Board meeting I had asked, in a lot of urban areas rents are going down, commercial rents are going down, but, you indicated that they said plus two percent.

Gary Heck: That’s what it’s, well, that’s what the contract calls for. It’s whatever that Consumer Price Index is. So, we track that same amount, and it’s based over the past 12 months. So, in January it actually had increased, the increase was 5.544, and that equates to a 2.559 percentage increase.

Gary Heck: So, whether we get there or not is a whole other story, but that’s it. In the salaries we always let the County Council make that determination as you have advised us in the past. We have included any of the longevity step increases that any of the employees that we have would be entitled to for next year, and we’ve shared all of our information with Mr. Deisher so he can double check to make sure that we’re all on that same page.

President Lloyd: You’re up, this budget’s up $144,000, four percent, but you’ve also got, under Dental Clinic, plus $100,000.

Gary Heck: Yes, I mean, that money that’s in there, we do have $100,000 in the Health Department’s budget that’s set up to be able to continue to run the Dental Clinic just because of....you’ve heard in the past about the hospitals were involved in a grant arrangement for the first two years, and that time has come and gone. Then, that’s what this money is set up to try to handle.

President Lloyd: So, between the Commissioners and the Health Department does it cost roughly $280,000 to run the Dental Clinic?

Gary Heck: Well, we’re on a sliding fee scale, so everybody pays something, even at the lowest level. If they happen to come in from another county, then we have, we had the County Attorney research this and we have a Vanderburgh County resident and then anybody outside of Vanderburgh County pays a separate, higher fee. It’s the same theory as in-state and out-of-state tuition at a State university. They followed those same exact rules.

President Lloyd: Do you get very many out-of-city or out-of-county for the Dental Clinic?

Gary Heck: That’s, to address Councilman Kiefer’s question, 95, or, excuse me, 85 percent of all of our patients are from Vanderburgh County. The remaining 15 percent comes from other counties in Indiana or from Illinois or from Kentucky. We serve a tri, you know, Evansville-Vanderburgh County serves the tri-state.

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, let me go to that, the rules that are established, you said follow the same guidelines as out-of-state tuition

Councilmember Shetler: Well, wait a minute my question is that, as I understand, like USI, neighboring outside counties don’t pay it, so is that what you’re telling us?

Gary Heck: No. What I’m saying is the legal theory that would allow us to charge a separate rate is based on that theory.

Councilmember Shetler: You’re just using the same mind set of charging outside–

Gary Heck: – County Council arrived at it was legal for us to charge separately.

Councilmember Shetler: Alright, fine. I just wanted to make sure that we weren’t–

Councilmember Shetler: – because, I’m assuming that 15 percent that’s coming from outside are people that are neighboring–

Councilmember Shetler: – I mean, they’re not coming from Cook County or something in Illinois, they’re coming from White, you know, whatever.

Gary Heck: It would be a long drive. Everybody does pay. So, that’s where the Health Department, I don’t know, if you didn’t have any other questions on the Health Department, I did want to share with you a couple of things. One of them, I would like to introduce two of our staff members, because you may not have had a chance to put a face and names and title together, but Paulette Hoffman, our Finance Officer, is with us today, and also Ginger Patton, she’s the Administrative Assistant to the Health Officer and the Administrator. I wanted you all to at least know those folks, so, in case you ever needed something and you couldn’t reach Dr. Nicholson or myself, they will be in a position to be able to help you as well.

Gary Heck: They could certainly answer them, and they would do a wonderful job at it.

Gary Heck: Part of what I also wanted to share with you is the value added that the Health Department does. The community Dental Clinic was also another CAJE advocated project, this goes back to about, well, several years, but in 2005-2006 was when it was formalized. Since June 26, 2006 when we opened our doors through July 31^st of this year, we’ve produced $1.46 worth of patient treatment for every dollar that we have spent. So, that’s one measure of how you look at return on investment.

President Lloyd: Are you talking about the whole Health Department, or just the Dental?

Gary Heck: Just the Dental Clinic. In the Dental Clinic, when you look at our total operating costs and then you subtract the revenues that were collected, now, this wouldn’t include any subsidies that would come from any of the other county sources, you get a net operating cost, and when you look at the total cost of the dental services that we’ve provided, which was $1,522,423, and if you divide that by the $1,042,663, you’re going to come up with the $1.46, which is the return. Now, our goal is $1.60, so we still have a ways to go to be able to reach that, but we’re making progress and we’re working towards that. During that time period we’ve served 4,035 patients, 2,083 are male, 1,952 are female. We’ve produced 21,161 different services during 10,007 patient visits. Over 92 percent of our patients don’t have dental insurance or medical insurance, that’s 300, excuse me 3,731 of the 4,035. Over 94 percent of our patients are between the ages of 21 and 70, so, that’s 3,798 of the 4,035. You’ll remember that we were specifically asked to address the adult population that was under served for dental care. They’re not being served by basically any other group, with the exception of the Impact Ministries, and they have a dental clinic, and it’s, they are on a much more limited type of scale, and they just can’t, between the both of us it’s hard to meet all of our needs. But, we’re certainly making a good crack at it.

President Lloyd: Okay, I mean, I think we’ve got a pretty good handle on the Dental Clinic.

Gary Heck: I will. The Vanderburgh County Health Department has administrated, has been administering this program on behalf of the county, and as of this past month Vanderburgh County residents have saved over three million dollars in price savings, $3,072,390. That’s 27.74 percent is the amount of money that’s saved when they use their National Association of Counties prescription drug card.

Gary Heck: That’s what it amounts to. It’s a savings that anybody who’s a resident of Vanderburgh County is eligible for, as long as you’re not covered by your insurance. If your insurance doesn’t cover a particular prescription drug, then this program will pick it up. It also considers pets as household members. So, if you have a pet that has been written a prescription drug, you can have it filled at the pharmacy and they qualify for the discount as well.

Gary Heck: No, you certainly wouldn’t want to do that. Also, I wanted to let you know that we’ve, you were talking about the computers, we were able to, the Health Department is in better shape today to respond to emergencies because of the H1N1 immunization effort that we held last year. One of the things that we were able to do during that was to beef up some of the infrastructure that will allow us to have equipment and materials so that we could not only take care of the H1N1 immunization effort as it was there, but now that that’s over with both equipment and materials stay with the Health Department that we can use in the future. We were able to acquire 25 new computers and also pay for the software and the software insurance, and these were furnished to all of our Public Health Nurses and the staff that entered data into the CHIRP program, which is the State-wide immunization registry program.

Gary Heck: For use during the H1N1 effort, and now that that’s over it’s there to help serve–

Gary Heck: Don’t have to give them back, but that’s money that the county won’t have to spend when you look at making sure that we’re in compliance–

President Lloyd: Right, we had an extended discussion yesterday about the computerization cost. So, I mean, this is, that’s great news that you guys were able to do that.

Gary Heck: And they’ll, I’m sure you covered the select agreement which is the company enterprise agreement which is one of the things that’s required. Well, this money also covered all of those expenses for those computers. We’ve also identified another grant source that will allow us to purchase another 25.

Gary Heck: The computer hardware itself was roughly $45,000, and then the software was $19,800 initially, and then there was an additional cost of probably right at $20,000 for the extended select service agreement under the State’s quantity purchase agreement. So, all of that goes through January the, excuse me, June 30^th of 2012. So, all of those expenses are already covered.

Gary Heck: Brand new units, the Dells that were under the State quantity purchase agreement using the Windows 7 enterprise, 64 bit. So, it’s, we’re state of the art when it comes to operating systems and the computers that we have.

Gary Heck: We’ve identified another grant that will also allow us to acquire another 25, when the time comes.

Gary Heck: So, that’s money that you will be able to save in other areas as we can move forward. One of the things that we haven’t realized the actual total savings yet, but we are in the process of consolidating the Fulton WIC clinic back to the Oak Park professional building. We will be able to request rent assistance from that grant to help pay for rent for next year. We won’t be able to do that until after December of this year.

Gary Heck: That’s a lease. We hope that that funds, will actually put us in a position where we would also be able to help share some of those costs associated with that. So, I wanted you at least to know what we are working on. We also have a second reading of an ordinance with the Commissioners as we look at our service fees, fees for services, and those will be modified at the August 24^th Commissioners meeting, and as soon as the county can participate in the Tyler Technology project where we’ll have the point of sale cash registers and the State Board of Account receipting, we should be in a position where we can actually charge for additional services we haven’t been able to charge for, because we couldn’t do the receipting in a timely manner. It’s just too cost prohibitive to write out an individual receipt for each and every transaction.

President Lloyd: So, that would be software that would allow you to print receipts?

Gary Heck: Print receipts and meet the State Board of Accounts requirements for deposits with the Auditor’s office and the Treasurer’s office.

Gary Heck: And that’s where we hope to be at this time next year where we’ll actually have additional revenue streams coming in to the Health Department.

Councilmember Shetler: Would there be any merit to partnering up with a nearby school to put, your outside clinic for example? Whereby that grant money, if they’ve got room in that school to operate a clinic. Because I’m making an assumption here that those are used primarily for families, and a lot for children getting vaccinations and stuff, as well as some other family type services that, it might be an ideal place and it may be a way for them to be able to recoup some revenue off of the rent from other government entities.

Gary Heck: Dr. Nick has been in discussion with the School Corporation and with USI, there’s a new, in the Glenwood Academy there’s an effort to do some of those exact things. The Health Department would be one component of that particular project. So, it is possible to at least discuss that. Public health is different from individual health in that we try to prevent disease for the entire community. We’re not necessarily concerned about the health of just one individual. That’s an individual physician’s responsibility. So, there is a little bit of difference in what we’re trying to accomplish. So, but, as much as we could do so, possibly, we’re always open to see how we can serve the community better. So, we would be interested in doing that. We did explore, you all asked us to check on some webinars so we could avoid some travel and training costs, and we have explored that. We’ve got three different scenarios that we’ve shared with Computer Services, and we hope to be able to move forward on that probably within the next two months. One of the things that, the internet connection that we have for that particular service has to be on an independent one different than the county or the city network, because there’s some firewall and security issues. We’ve got that already arranged, so, now it’s a matter of making sure that we’ve got the grant funds in place to move forward. We hope to be able to have that in place within the next three months. If we do that, we hope to be able to reduce our travel requests that come to this Council, because we could be able to then participate in training from our own building and be face to face just like in a distance learning classroom.

Councilmember Goebel: This is nothing you’ve requested right now, but, obviously, you’ve been doing a lot with the immunization, the new immunization for school children, and I’ve read that a lot of the families have not complied. Is there going to be an operation by the Health Department maybe to go out to the individual schools and innoculate at EVSC cost or something like that?

Gary Heck: Well, we haven’t ruled anything out other than we’ve made it, we’ve tried to do everything we could before school started to have the greatest opportunity for parents to get an early start. We met and went into schools at the end of last school year. We’ve had walk-in clinics at the Health Department over the entire summer. We’ve done radio blitzes to encourage parents to come in. We’ve conducted clinics at the Centre on August the 5^th and 6^th that were disappointing to us in that there weren’t that many people. We’re doing the best we can to try to accommodate everyone. We don’t have the staff to go individually to each and every school for the entire year. So, we’re going to see what we can do to work out trying to get something done, but our goal is to try to protect as many people as possible, but, quite honestly, we feel it’s time that the parents kind of step up to the plate and accept the responsibility of parenthood, which means they do have the responsibility to be concerned about their children and to make sure that they do receive the immunizations that they need to be protected. So, but, we’ll do our best.

Councilmember Goebel: Well, I know you are. You’ve done a great job, but, obviously, the people, the parents who have not yet brought their children forward probably are going to be reluctant to do so. If the schools say you can’t come, those are the very students we probably need to have in school.

Gary Heck: Our issue isn’t necessarily going to the school, it’s making sure that when we go to the schools that the schools have already requested and received the parental permission, those waiver slips, and as long as they have an adequate number, and I’m not, I don’t know whether to tell you that would be, if there’s 300 students in the school, if they had a hundred students that needed them back, I don’t know what that percentage is, but it needs to be worth our while to actually be able to go out there to do it. Of course, if you’ve protected one more child, you can always take that attitude that you’re that much better off.

Gary Heck: There is some dollar and cents issues here where you, it’s counterproductive to go out and just vaccinate two kids, when you could have gotten all of the rest of them at the same time if you can.

Councilmember Goebel: We’ll leave that to you. Thank you. I know we got off the subject.

Councilmember Terry: I just wanted confirmation again on the Dental Clinic, I hate to go back to it, but–

Councilmember Terry: –the negotiations with the hospital, you’re saying there’s no, absolutely no opportunity for even half of the grant that they’ve been providing for the last two years?

Gary Heck: My understanding is that when they were approached by not only discussions with the Health Department, but with the County Commissioners and the previous County Council folks who had arranged that previously, it was made known it was a time limited type of project, and that after that point in time it would be like the expectation from the hospital’s part, it would be like any other program or service that the county offered. That’s where we are today. That’s where the requests for the assistance from the Riverboat portion–

Gary Heck: –and then also the fact that the Health Department has put in a separate line item, up to $100,000, to help support that. We have tried to write grants to a lot of other groups and agencies, but every foundation that we approached, with the exception of Kresge’s, has a specific preclusion that if you’re a tax based government facility–

Gary Heck: – you can’t come to them. They only want to fund 501C3 type organizations.

Gary Heck: The Kresge Foundation is different, and we’re in discussions with the ECHO Community Health Clinic to try to work on a combined grant. Right now the ECHO Community Health Clinic funds some of the homeless patients that they serve for dental services. We do a referral service with them. We’re hoping to expand that to other under insured and uninsured adults, and the Kresge grant would help us be able to pick that up, but we have to make our way through all of the paperwork to get that done.

Gary Heck: It’s the only foundation or grant source that we’ve found that doesn’t specifically preclude us from applying in the first place.

Jeff Alhers: Two things, I guess, on that point, I guess, you guys could look into, I don’t know if it makes any difference to make it a 501C3, if you’ve got the grants lined up.

Gary Heck: We, there’s been some discussion to perhaps try to do that where a broader group could help then serve the Impact Ministry, the Sheriff’s office has their own dental services from time to time and they may need additional dental services. It’s a group that could pick up a much broader than just the group that we’re actually looking at.

Jeff Ahlers: One of the other questions I had that, I guess, and seeing all of this unfold the last two or three years that, I guess, I’ve not understood is that, you know, like, for example, lawyers in the community donate time and money to the volunteer lawyer program or to Legal Aid Society. You know, medical doctors donate time and money to various clinics or the hospitals, and it just seems that the thing that’s been missing in all this is where are the dentists? You know, what about the Dental Associations donating time or money. I mean, to me it seems like this would be something that would be of interest to them. This is what they should care about, and, so, has anybody approached them?

Gary Heck: The First District Dental Society has been very supportive of the project. They were, they provided a committee that helped put the business plan together in the first place, they helped work on the advice for purchasing and outfitting the Dental Clinic to start with, they actually had a major fund drive and named one of the operatories after one of their members who died, unfortunately, a year or two ago, Dr. Reibold, and they raised $40,000 for the operation of this at that time. They’ve been actively involved in a lot of things. They, the surgeons, the oral surgeons accept referrals for patients, and, I guess, it’s like attorneys who do pro bono work, there’s some similar arrangements that are there where they either donate or they accept whatever, if there is any type of Medicaid surgery reimbursement involved they perhaps could be eligible for that. So, the dentists do a lot, it may not be the exact same as writing a check each and every week kind of thing, but the dentists, the First District Dental Society has been very, very supportive of the community Dental Clinic. So, but it is a different type of, it may not be exactly what some folks would like to see people do.

President Lloyd: Okay, one more question, Mr. Shetler? Oh, you don’t have it? Okay. Mr. Kiefer? Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: Gary, until, I mean, I don’t think it was ever conveyed to us initially that Deaconess nor St. Mary’s were in it for the short haul. I think it was once they got us in business they walked away from it. You know, when you talk about 4,000 plus patients, there’s no doubt in my mind that we’ve relieved a lot of burden from them. Now, they can say what they want, but, you know, that’s had to take a lot of their troubles away from their area into ours. So, you know, I think there probably needs to be one last push, before we approve this budget, to get them to get back into this thing with us.

Councilmember Raben: –because I’m looking at this, like many others, that, hey, these numbers are astounding, you know, they say that they’ve not seen any, you know, change in their flow, and I don’t believe it.

President Lloyd: Or, you could talk to the Commissioners and work with them on it as well.

President Lloyd: Any other questions on the Health Department? We need to get moving. Thank you very much.

Gary Heck: I guess you all knew we won the Leadership Evansville Award, the community Dental Clinic, as the project for government and public service work.

Susan Plassmeier: Good afternoon. Susan Plassmeier with the Extension Service here in Vanderburgh County. Our budget’s really pretty simple. We kind of flat lined everything. In the salaries, the 1000 level we’ve got two increases, but those are both step increases. Then, the only other thing that we’re asking for is that $361 in Contractual Services that we’ve not been able to get for the last three years. That is not all salary, it also includes our computer services through Purdue. We do not utilize the county computer service system, so our software is through Purdue and our maintenance and trouble, they take care of us. It also helps us subsidize, we have four paraprofessionals that are USDA grants through the federal grant, through the Stamp System that work with limited resource families here in Vanderburgh County teaching nutrition education.

Susan Plassmeier: That would be in that Contractual Services of 3530 that we’re $361 short.

Susan Plassmeier: That, it covers a multitude of things. That helps to, with salaries with our Purdue educators, it helps put some of their benefits, it also helps, it’s our computer lines. We have a two way computer system, telecommunication system with Purdue where we can do trainings. Also, it helps the support with the family nutrition program assistance.

President Lloyd: Okay, the total budget increased $4,302, which is 1.3 percent, pretty minimal.

Councilmember Shetler: The travel, you guys have to go back and forth to Lafayette a lot, or other places?

Susan Plassmeier: We do have, they’re trying to minimize that and do as much as we can with the two way and Adobe Connect trainings and stuff, but there is still some travel a couple times a year to Purdue and back. We also, we are out in the community a lot, and, so it’s also the transportation costs going out and doing programming in the communities.

Councilmember Shetler: Okay, that was the point that I was going to make is on the webinars and you guys are trying to utilize those as much as possible, okay, thank you.

President Lloyd: That’s terrible. Any other questions for Co-Op Extension? If none, okay, thank you very much.

President Lloyd: I guess, one item that I’d noticed when I went through this, 1850, Union Overtime, through six months we’ve spent $48,000. I believe we had to do a transfer on that, or an appropriation. We’re budgeting $50,000, is that unrealistic? Or can we do a better job managing where you don’t have as much overtime?

Chris Walsh: It’s just so weather related. It just depends on the season and how the weather strikes us. We felt like that was a pretty good number though.

Councilmember Raben: A lot of that is so dependent on if you get your snowfall on Saturday morning–

Councilmember Raben: –they’re working Saturday and Sunday, you know, removing snow. Oh, by the way, I mean–

Chris Walsh: We go back to the five day work week long before the snow could impact to make that day difference with any of that.

Councilmember Raben: By the way, I think the crew, again, did a great job this year of cleaning the snowfall.

Councilmember Raben: I mean, it’s interesting to hear them, you know, you hear them come by your house at 3:00 in the morning grading snow. They did a good job.

Councilmember Goebel: A pet peeve, I guess, from back a few years ago when you had no control over the cost, but do we have adequate supplies of calcium chloride now?

Chris Walsh: Yeah, we’ve actually switched to a product called beet juice. It’s more environmentally friendly.

Chris Walsh: And the cost has dramatically dropped. Several years ago it wasn’t feasible to use it, the cost was so high on it. Now, it’s at or below the cost of the calcium chloride. I’m putting a few things in place that should help us as much as possibly 30 percent savings on this calcium chloride or beet juice.

Chris Walsh: I’m hoping to have that in before the first snow starts this year.

Councilmember Raben: You know, the former Superintendent a few years back said the jury was still out on whether the beet juice was effective or not, but you think it’s what it’s supposed to be?

Chris Walsh: Yes, sir, you know, I’ve looked at surrounding states and municipalities and what they use and the science tells me that this product not only is environmentally friendly, more so than the calcium chloride, but also works as well or better. So, it seemed to be a no-brainer. We’ve traveled to other municipalities, you know, I’m not trying to reinvent anything, but when I see something done very well, as in the case of Jasper, even though they have a smaller number of roads, we’ve kind of mirrored ourselves off of them. Mr. Duckworth started it when I was there last time, I’ve just tried to kind of continue it with him and add a few of my own little things.

Councilmember Raben: You know, one of the neat things about that product too, we talk about overtime, I mean, we can spread that in advance of the storm. So, we can do it on regular business hours two days, or 24 hours out in advance.

Chris Walsh: We do a pre-treat, and then we actually treat the salt, and what I’m going to try to put into place is to where we can pick and choose as we treat that salt as to save some of the money, apply it to the different routes that need it, and not put it as much on other routes that won’t, may not need it.

Councilmember Raben: I might remind everybody, this budget has to meet State’s approval. Bill, we usually submit this when? Before the State for their approval.

Bill Fluty: We actually do it later in the year. When the revenues, when we get more revenues in, closer to the end of the year.

Councilmember Shetler: This is maybe a question for Bill. Why do we not do something on a depreciation allowance? Particularly for our heavier equipment and things in funds like this? Would that be appropriate? Yes.

Councilmember Shetler: Well, you know, so that you have some kind of reserve fund back that we don’t get hit with a half a million dollar, you know, dozer or something like that all at one time. Because most of the equipment, a lot of times he’s talking about bigger type stuff.

Bill Fluty: Normally, I guess, our reserve account is really our CCD account. Often, anytime that he has equipment that he wants to buy, that’s where it comes from. He doesn’t have the revenues to support his budget as it’s presented with the gasoline tax. We supplement it through COIT dollars, but, normally when there’s a big purchase it comes from CCD. So, that is where we’re going to, normally, when he buys trucks or gradalls or so forth and so on. The other opportunity is to come out of either the Riverboat account or come straight out from the General Fund.

Councilmember Shetler: I mean, I’ve kind of noticed this on several of our different things, the only one that seems like they do that is the Airport does have an allowance there for depreciation on, you know, in their accounting system that they’re using, but we don’t tend to do that.

Bill Fluty: Well, I don’t think we’ve ever been able to afford to put money back on a regular basis to redo his fleet.

President Lloyd: That’s just governmental accounting, they don’t, a lot of times do not count for depreciation.

Councilmember Raben: Along with that, the airport is spreading their budget out amongst the airlines. I mean, that’s totally different. The airlines are paying them in advance of equipment, you know, future equipment. Here it’s just, you know, money out of our pocket.

Councilmember Shetler: I mean, I understand underneath our General Funds and some of those, but some of those areas that we could get different funds that I didn’t know if it made sense to look at that a little bit harder and changing some of our accounting principles there that might, you know, allow us to get some money from some of those outside sources.

Councilmember Raben: Well, I think we do that though. Correct me if I’m wrong, Chris or Bill, but, you know, we’ll buy equipment out of the Cum Bridge Fund, as an example, or Local Roads and Streets that are separate funds. It may be a dump truck that the bridge crew uses some of the time, but we’re hauling asphalt in it during the summer months.

Chris Walsh: That’s correct, but when you get into the bigger pieces of equipment, the $300,000 pieces of equipment, I don’t have that kind of room in these kind of budgets. We squeak by to try and put this truck up for bid that we’re hoping will go out next week.

President Lloyd: One quick question, the last item in the budget, University Parkway, are we done with that? Or is that–

John Stoll: That came about several years ago when, I believe it was the Major Moves money that was distributed around the State, that was where the money came in. We haven’t budgeted any more Highway Funds for that, it’s all been Road and Street and Bridge Funds since.

President Lloyd: Maybe the State told us to put it in the Highway budget, the County Highway, or we just thought that was a better way to track it.

President Lloyd: But, that, so, we won’t get anymore money for that? I mean, there’s work to be done on University Parkway, but this doesn’t affect that anymore?

John Stoll: Right, we haven’t requested it mainly because there’s not sufficient funds in the Highway Fund to cover it. That’s why we try to keep all of the requests in the Road and Street and Bridge Funds.

President Lloyd: Okay. Any other questions on Highway? An increase of $123,000, three percent. If not, let’s move on to Cumulative Bridge Fund, page 117.

John Stoll: First was account number 3141, Communications. I had intended to put $1,750 in there, that covers the cell phones for the Engineering Department. Then, the other one was account number 4429, Engineer Equipment. In years past we’ve asked for $15,000, it looks like we could back that off to $10,000 for next year.

Councilmember Shetler: Equipment Repairs, $40,000 budgeted, but so far, at least our thing shows that you’ve only expended $1,811. So, I mean, is there...I’ve noticed in the past you’ve kind of been along that line of $30,000 to $35,000.

Chris Walsh: Yeah, and we’re, we’ve got several equipment repairs coming up. You know, the age of the equipment, it’s just a hard predictor. I have pieces of equipment in the fleet that are 20 plus years old and I’m trying to get several more years out of them. We’re just trying to do the best on anticipating what the overall–

Councilmember Shetler: In 4250, Miscellaneous Equipment, what is that used for? It’s $35,000 budgeted.

Chris Walsh: That would be like, say, last year, I think we used that to get the mini excavator. We actually bought a piece of equipment out of it, and this year I don’t know that I’ve spent, what I’ve spent out of that.

Councilmember Shetler: Seventy, yeah, $7,500 and change. Is there anything you’re anticipating spending out of that next year?

Chris Walsh: Yeah, we’re going to have to, I’m starting a little more of an aggressive maintenance program to take some of these older pieces of equipment and extend some of the life on them. That’s where we were going to look to help us with that.

Councilmember Raben: Again, this is it’s own tax rate separate of the General Fund.

Chris Walsh: I want to say that this year to help us with the...we had a truck get totaled during the, one of the snow storms, and I believe that that money, some of that money is going towards the new truck that we’re wanting to put out.

President Lloyd: It looks like the major projects projected, you’ve got Old Boonville Highway and Maryland Street Bridge?

John Stoll: Yes, the Maryland Street Bridge, ideally we would like to get federal funding on that. If we can get federal funding, the $500,000 requested would cover our local match and our inspection costs. If we’re unable to get federal funds then I will be making another request in the 2012 budget and it will probably be in the neighborhood of a half million dollars again in order to be able to complete the project. The Old Boonville Highway bridge is out between Green River and Burkhardt, and that’s just a bridge that’s recommended for replacement based on our bi-annual bridge inspection.

Councilmember Goebel: What are the chances, John, do you think of getting that grant for Maryland Street?

John Stoll: So far it looks pretty good. I’ve been working with the MPO and there are going to be available federal funds that we can pick that up. We’ve gone ahead and supplemented the contract with a consultant to go ahead and do the environmental studies since that’s one of the requirements to get the federal funds. So, everything looks pretty good so far, and I would hope that early next year we’ll know one way or the other.

President Lloyd: Any other questions on Cumulative Bridge? Let’s move on to Local Roads and Streets, 2160, page 131.

Councilmember Raben: Chris, how many miles of road will we have paved by the end of the paving season?

Chris Walsh: Twenty one, I believe 21 was the number we were going to hit. We have, in that mileage there’s several kind of projects we helped with, Burdette walking path out there, we have a lot of spot paving projects going on, and then John’s office and mine has kind of combined to do something, I believe’s a pretty big money saver, in that he’s contracting out to mill Evergreen Estates, a good portion of that, and then we’re going to come back in, crack seal it and pave, which should show a pretty substantial savings had you contracted it out. But, your answer is 21 miles, I believe is what we’re–

President Lloyd: You’ve got the big decrease in University Parkway, what’s that about?

John Stoll: Based on the numbers we’re looking at right now, that should be sufficient to get the project to construction. Just over the last week we’ve been working with INDOT to try and find what available funds they show on the federal side, and we’ve got some discrepancies on the dollars. They need to shift some funds around based on what the MPO has shown as our available funding, federal funding sources, but, long story short, it looks like with these funds, the $300,000 plus the federal funds that we think are obligated to this project we should be able to get it to the final segment out for bid in December or January.

John Stoll: The only drawback to this is, it looks like this would max out the federal money, which would mean any unforeseen change orders would end up having to be 100 percent locally funded. So, this should cover us to get it to bid, but if we run into problems, then I would have to come back for another appropriation to make up any shortfalls.

President Lloyd: Okay, any other questions? So, this budget, because of that, mainly, it’s a decrease of $605,000 over the prior year.

John Stoll: There was one other thing that I wanted to point out too. I didn’t mean to interrupt.

Councilmember Goebel: On the, excuse me, on that phase, exactly from what point, point A to point B are you talking about?

John Stoll: Yes. The estimated construction cost is right around nine million, and it looks like the federal money is there, so, we won’t have to split it into two more segments, we’ll get it all done in one.

John Stoll: Which would mean construction would begin February or March. There are regulations that prohibit cutting trees down after April 1^st, so, construction, it may just be right-of-way clearing, but construction should begin some time in March, if we’re able to get everything worked out with INDOT.

John Stoll: That was what I wanted to point out, we did not request any funds in that this year because it looks like if the current balances are encumbered at the end of this year, it should be sufficient to cover all the costs for 2011. We would have to come back and request additional funds again in 2012, but with encumbrances it did not look like any money would be needed for 2011. The same thing with Traffic Lights.

John Stoll: When the City-County Traffic Department switched the traffic signals to LED lenses rather than incandescent bulbs it drops the electric bill from around $100 per signal per month to around $25. So, with that cost savings, with encumbrances there will enough money to cover the costs in 2011, but, once again, 2012 we’ll be back down to needing additional funds again.

President Lloyd: Fabulous. That’s great news. Any other questions on Local Roads and Streets? Alright, gentlemen, thank you very much.

President Lloyd: Legal Aid was dealt with in the joint budget session. There’s no one here from Legal Aid. We’ll move on to 1090, Assessor, page 48 and page 137.

Jonathan Weaver: Oh, I don’t know. Good morning, Jonathan Weaver, your Vanderburgh County Assessor.

President Lloyd: Any questions for the Assessor? His general budget is page 48, and then the assessment budget is 137. Mr. Bassemier?

Councilmember Bassemier: Mr. Weaver, on your Extra Help, you’re asking for a little bit more. Could you tell us the reason why? From 2010 you asked for $40,000 and now for 2011 it’s $100,000. Is that because we’re, you need a full time person and you’re trying to make up the difference with the Extra Help?

Jonathan Weaver: Well, that’s one of the reasons, yes. This is, we’re talking about the Reassessment Fund now. Yeah, we’re in that State mandated reassessment right now. We’re using that $40,000 as we speak. We have about three part timers right now. We have two on the Welfare to Work program and that’s working out great. I mean, we’ve had seven this year from Welfare to Work, and two of them, or one of them we’ve hired on a part time basis now, and we’re hoping maybe to hire a second one shortly. But, basically, that’s because of the reassessment coming up. I really appreciate the Council’s support on this, because where some counties are spending upwards of seven figures, you know, we’re trying to do it in-house here and save a lot of taxpayer money.

President Lloyd: Okay, on the regular County Assessor’s budget we’ve got an increase of $20,559, which is 1.18 percent, but if you go to the reassessment, obviously, we’ve got a request, quite a bit of requests for expenditures there, plus $106,000.

Jonathan Weaver: Yeah, if I can comment, the General Fund increases are due to step increases.

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, are we still sending two people out to houses, residences as they go out and measure and stuff?

Councilmember Shetler: Okay. How many people do you have total in your office that are doing that?

Councilmember Raben: I don’t have a question, just a general comment. Yesterday we had discussed the opportunity to move your office’s percentage of insurance or what amounts for your insurance, along with computer, the computer department, IT and shifting that to reassessment. Do you have any qualms with that?

Councilmember Raben: Whatever your insurance, whatever the price tag is for insurance for your employees shifting that from the General Fund into Reassessment, along with whatever Matt Arvay’s department, whatever percentage your office, your functions are, our overall bill for IT shifting that as well. (Inaudible. Mic not on.) shifting that to Reassessment in the hopes of that being helpful with all the cuts that we need, you know, from the property tax side shifted onto Reassessment.

Jonathan Weaver: This is the first I’m hearing about it, but the only thing taken out of the General Fund right now for us are our salaries, and, I guess, the insurance that you’re talking about, or the FICA.

Councilmember Raben: It’s not actually in your budget, but it’s coming out of General Fund in the County Council’s budget.

Jonathan Weaver: Well, the only, I guess, I’m open for discussion at another time. I guess, my only concern is the Reassessment Fund is supposed to be used for about eight specific things. So, that would be my concern in being compliant with the law.

Councilmember Raben: I think it does say though that you can pay salaries and insurance with it.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, I think you can, but, anyway, it would help. Everything that we can shift out of the property tax side into the Reassessment side, you know, the ultimate goal might be at some point to maybe offer county employees a raise this year if we get to the point we need to get to, and it would be a huge help getting us there. So, anyway, we’ll discuss it more between now and then.

President Lloyd: I guess, just looking at these numbers on the Reassessment budget, which is page 137-138, is, what is different in 2011 versus ‘08 or ‘09, or 2010 where you’ve got roughly $260,000 budgeted? Your request for ‘11 is $379,000.

Jonathan Weaver: A lot of that has to do with the reassessment. You’ll notice that the part time is up two and a half times. We’re counting on six people at seven days a week, or seven hours a day, Monday through Friday all year. That would account, that would pay for six people, seven hours a day, Monday through Friday, for the year. Then, we’re still going to dip in and make ourselves available to the Welfare to Work program. We utilized unpaid internships this year from USI. We’re going to reach out to those universities again to get some bodies in the office. So, we’re looking at ways to cut costs.

President Lloyd: For Travel/Mileage do you guys have access to vehicles? Or do you have to reimburse people?

Jonathan Weaver: We reimburse people. That cost right there, we got an e-mail from the county insurance agent, surprised that we’re using our own vehicles, and we would like to ask your permission to maybe buy four vehicles through some, you know, if the Sheriff’s Department gets rid of some, or–

Jonathan Weaver: –well, we tried to use Burdette Park, but their vehicles are, I don’t know, they’re unfit for our use, but, we’re even looking at the possibility of renting cars through Enterprise for six months, 24 weeks.

President Lloyd: Do you think that, I guess, we would need to do a cost analysis, would it be cheaper to rent a car or to just pay mileage?

Jonathan Weaver: I would really like your assistance on how to go about (Inaudible).

Councilmember Raben: –the insurance side. As long as you’re paying mileage, if they’re on business time, as long as you’re paying them mileage or giving them vehicle allowance, that covers, that’s why you pay them the mileage or vehicle allowance is to reimburse them for the cost of operating that automobile and insurance. So, we might, you might want to double check that with them, Jonathan, I don’t think they’re correct on that.

Jonathan Weaver: We had an accident in late June with someone, and there are some insurance questions there.

Councilmember Raben: If they use their own vehicle and weren’t being compensated for it, like you’ve said, down here at Office Depot and pick up a box of pens, that’s different. If they’re out measuring properties and you’re paying them a per diem or a mileage or you’re just paying them a flat vehicle, monthly vehicle allowance, that’s totally different. That’s completely different.

Councilmember Kiefer: They need to notify their insurance company that they’re using it for work purposes, and that might be where the glitch is, because they didn’t, you know, they get a discount if they’re just using it for personal use and not business use.

Councilmember Raben: When they’re not being paid to use their vehicle, if it’s, whether or not they would be covered, but as long as, you know, if you’ve started your reassessment season and said, hey, we’re going to pay everybody a hundred dollars a month vehicle allowance, let’s say, that puts the onus on them.

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, last year I think we budgeted for 23 Level II certificates, people with Level II.

Councilmember Shetler: I know that that’s gotten a little bit out of hand and we’ve had more than that, I guess, that have applied.

Councilmember Shetler: Well, it hasn’t been, I guess, really managed, and we’ve gone over that budgeted amount of 23, and there’s been a request in for some additional funds, an additional appropriation by your office to help fund that, to get it up to the level that you have in your office today. It looks like, to me, that the request for next year is actually for 34 Level II’s, plus one elected official, so 35 total Level II’s in your office. How many are really necessary? I mean, does everybody in the office need to be a Level II? I mean, I’m certain that you’ve got some people that are just, you know, whether they’re just answering the phone or they’re doing some other kinds of work that may not be really involved in what’s necessary out of a Level II certificate.

Jonathan Weaver: Well, this is part of that cross training philosophy, where anybody that handles real property is, the law says that they need to have their Level II. So, we have, my notes here have 33 Level II’s budgeted for next year. That’s getting, that’s saving $2,500.

Councilmember Shetler: Let’s see, they’re $500 a piece, at 34 would be $17,000, plus an elected official gets a thousand. You’re asking for $18,000, so that’s how I came up with my numbers.

Jonathan Weaver: We’re talking about personal property department not having Level II’s, but when you touch a sales disclosure and you’re in the assessing software, you know, we need to have our Level II’s, plus it gives us credibility and education background to, it gives us good credibility to the taxpayer.

President Lloyd: Well, I mean, that’s probably true, I just, I would question if all of those people work in real estate would they need that extra certification? Now, you’re saying that they all are involved in some type of real estate duties where they need specialized training Level II certification?

Jonathan Weaver: Sales disclosures, the appeals department, the real estate department.

President Lloyd: Okay, we’re just trying to get a handle on this. Any other–

Councilmember Shetler: Let me go further, since last year we did, you know, basically go along with the 23 that was requested and that was put in and it went over, do we expect that you’re going to honor this 35 next year? Or will we see some additional dollars being requested and that may go over it?

Jonathan Weaver: Well, it’s going to depend on turn over and all of that sort of thing. You know, in my opinion, the more Level II’s, the better off you are. At this second I think we have everyone that needs to be a Level II. So, at this second, I don’t plan on sending anybody else to get their Level II. We will be needing to work on our Level III’s, and we’ll be bringing some courses to Evansville next year for that so we can begin that. We did have three or four this year that went out and earned their Level II, so that’s why you’re looking at the increase for 2010.

Councilmember Shetler: Of course, from our perspective, what’s important here is that we have people who live within the budget, that we’re told something today and next year they understand that and they follow that guideline. If everybody kind of runs amuck about it, then it’s going to be difficult to keep a handle on county expenses here. So, I mean, you understand our perspective on it?

Jonathan Weaver: Yeah, and are we making an additional appropriation or is that just a transfer? It’s a transfer?

President Lloyd: Okay, any other questions on Assessor or the Reassessment Fund? If not, we’ll move on to Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals, page 139.

President Lloyd: There’s a couple of increases here, Office Supplies and Contractual Services. What would those be related to?

Jonathan Weaver: Again, just asking for your help so that we can get the reassessment done.

President Lloyd: Oh, I’m sorry. I’m trying to throw you out and you’re still here. Any questions on Sales Disclosure Fees?

President Lloyd: Yeah, this is a flat budget. I guess Council’s satisfied with that.

President Lloyd: Okay, we’ll go to County Auditor, page seven and page 135. For those that are interested in the Parks and Recreation, we’re down to the last one. Any questions of County Auditor? Here he comes.

Bill Fluty: Bill Fluty, County Auditor. The General Fund budget just reflects step increases.

President Lloyd: Page 135 is Reassessment for the Auditor, and that budget is actually decreased by $1,000 in Printing, or, no, Training went from $1,000 to zero. Any questions for the County Auditor? Thank you, you’ve been most helpful.

President Lloyd: Jail Bond, page 162. Basically, an amount that’s a legal amount based on the bonds that were sold for the jail.

Bill Fluty: That’s actually the amount that we will pay next year for those bonds.

President Lloyd: Do you have an idea of what the balance is roughly? The balance on that bond?

Bill Fluty: To pay that off? I could get that to you, but right now that was a 30 year note, I believe, or 25, so, it’s quite a way off.

President Lloyd: Okay, it’s my understanding that the last one, Bond Debt Repayment, that fund, that bond was paid off, is that correct?

President Lloyd: Okay, the end of ‘09 we paid that off. So, the county does pay its debts. Thank you very much. Any other comments before we close this session? Okay we will recess until September 1^st. Thank you very much.