The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 2^nd day of December 2009 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 8:32 a.m. by County Council President Tom Shetler, Jr.

President Shetler: Good morning. It’s December 2^nd, it’s 8:30 by my watch, I guess, 8:32 by the one back there, and welcome to the County Council meeting. I’d like, first of all, to call the attendance please.

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

President Shetler: There being seven present, no absent, we have a quorum. I’d like at this time to ask our County Auditor, Bill Fluty, to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

President Shetler: Thank you. Next we have approval of the minutes from the November 4^th meeting.

President Shetler: Motion and a second. Any questions? All in favor signify by saying aye.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, good morning. The first and only one for the day is the Treasurer, 1030-4220 Office Machines in the amount of $12,000, I’ll move approval.

Rick Davis: Sorry to interrupt. Rick Davis, Vanderburgh County Treasurer. I’ve got my Chief Deputy Zachary Heronemus here today. He’s handing out some cost estimates. As you know, last week I went over in great detail a five year plan for us to do printing in-house and there was one catch. Unfortunately, I would like to ask the Council to disregard my request to use the funds to purchase our office machinery right now. As I had told you last week, Xerox recently won a bid for the city’s copier needs and the county had the ability to take advantage of those cost savings. So I gave Xerox a crack at trying to give us an ability to do this project at an even better deal for taxpayers. However, the most aggressive model Xerox offered our local governing units involved an $11,000 multi-functional copier that does not utilize MICR ink, and MICR ink is a necessity for the printing of our property tax bills. Xerox did quote us a wonderful price on two MICR printers at an attractive price of $6,800 total, but the toner yield for those printers is only 19,000 copies for every $465 toner cartridge. That would require 11 print cartridges to print 200,000 MICR copies at a cost of 5,155. The non-MICR multi-functional copier would cost .006 per click, and at 600,000 copies, that would come out to $3,600. And when you add up the capital cost in year one and maintenance cost and toner in years two through five, we’re talking an average of $38,000 to print our tax bills. That’s $41,000 cheaper over a five year period than the out of state vendor we used this year, but it’s negligible when you consider that I got a quote from a local vendor who will do the job for almost exactly the same cost, 39,000. At this point, I can’t justify purchasing this costly equipment when it could be done professionally, locally at nearly the exact same cost without risk to the county. The previous offer for printers I had on my presentation a week ago from Van Ausdall & Farrar still stands, but unlike our current printers and the printers from Xerox, the Van Ausdall printers get phenomenal yield per cartridge, 144,000 for regular toner and 72,000 for MICR. However, not mentioned to me in the original discussions were two maintenance kits that are required after every 160,000 clicks. And the maintenance kits and additional printer cartridges required to do this job kick up our five year average to $35,778, which is cheaper than the quote from the local vendor, Data Mail, but again, I don’t know if I can justify the liability of the county for a $700 a year savings. My initial goal in coming to you today was to bring you the best deal I could find on printers in order to encumber money from our current budget, which we’re under nearly $19,000 for the year, and to use that money to cover capital costs on this project. But I don’t feel I can do that in good conscience today. So despite the many, many hours I’ve dedicated to this project, I’m going to put it on hold for one more week in an effort to get a better deal on printers with better toner yield. And if I’m successful, I would like to come before you again in January and if it’s okay with the Council, I would give another presentation and ask for that request at that time. But right now, for a five year period, I just can’t justify it at this point. There is a silver lining because, as you know, we’ve already found a local vendor who can do that job for 15% cheaper than it was done this year. And we’re including one additional form and we are also eliminating one person in our staff, which is going to result in a nearly $40,000 a year savings. So I just would like for you to table this request. Let me do a little more homework, give me one more week. If I can find printers that can do the job with the cost savings I outlined last week, I’ll come before you in January and ask for an additional request. If I can’t then we will just put this out for an RFP to get the job done by a local vendor for next year.

President Shetler: Okay, well, I appreciate your candor on it and your prudence. I agree with you, it doesn’t seem like it would be worth our while to invest into that today, but Councilman Goebel and then Councilman Raben?

Councilmember Raben: Just a brief comment and then I’ll amend my earlier motion. I still commend you for the effort and the fact that you’ve made the effort. And the worst case scenario is that we’re still saving 15% a year. So, job well done, and thank you very much.

Rick Davis: Hopefully, I’ll get to come before you in January and say we can still save additional funds.

Councilmember Raben: With that, Mr. President, I’ll move to amend my motion for 1030-4220 be set in at zero.

Councilmember Raben: Just a comment. The next motion, we’ll want to set in the transfer, as well, at zero.

Councilmember Raben: You still need the PERF or the tax sale money? There is another item.

Rick Davis: Oh, that’s fine. Yeah, you can leave that as is. What I was here for is the appropriation for the Office Machinery and I’d just like for you to just table it and let me come back in January if I can show the savings, and if the next week I can’t find the savings, then we’ll just put it out for bid for a local vendor to do the job.

President Shetler: So you amended the motion then to bring it in at zero rather than – all in favor signify by saying – we had a second on that?

Councilmember Raben: Okay, now for transfers. First under 1030-3410 Printing in the amount of 18,483, I move we set that in at zero and 1030-1910 PERF in the amount of $11 transferred into 1030-1270-1030, make that in the form of a motion.

Councilmember Raben: I’m going to lump the Sheriff and Jail together along with Community Corrections. Sheriff, we have transfers in the amount of $33,000 from a vacant Deputy line item into Overtime; under Jail, Confinement Officer in the amount of $10,000 transferred into Overtime; Community Corrections, Confinement Officer in the amount of $1,000 transferred into Shift Differential and then we have a late transfer, which is from a Sergeant line in the amount of $10,071 transferred into a Lieutenant line in the amount of $5,315 and Sergeant line in the amount of $4,756, I’ll move approval.

President Shetler: It’s been moved and seconded. Do I have any questions or comments? All in favor, signify by saying aye.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, does anyone have any questions? I can take the balance of these in one motion if you’d like. Does anyone have any questions on any of the other transfers? None? Okay, Mr. President, I will move that the remainder or the balance of the transfers be approved as listed.

President Shetler: It’s been moved and seconded. Do I have any questions? Comments? All in favor, signify by saying aye.

President Shetler: Alright, the next item then is, basically, new business. We started talking about the hiring freeze and I think, Councilman Sutton, you had brought that up before about revising that slightly. Did we have anything else to add to that?

Councilmember Sutton: I am not aware that we had any additional things to add to it. We, at our last regular meeting, we tweaked it, made some adjustments to it, and I think there was pretty much common consent on the proposal. I guess it’s not a proposal, but I guess it’s, on the resolution. And so if there are any other items, I’m not aware of it. But, I mean, this would be a good time to discuss those if there are some adjustments to that resolution.

President Shetler: Do I have any comments or questions about the hiring freeze as we proposed?

Councilmember Lloyd: Do we have final language? I guess we don’t have it in front of us.

President Shetler: We approved that the last time. I think we left it that we’d bring it up again in case there were any other questions that came up.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, the discussion was for 2010, what action we would take so, in fact, that’s how it’s listed on our agenda. We’ve already enacted it for 2009 at our last meeting which is kind of the tail end. So the question is, do we want to take that same language, the same resolution and then carry that over for 2010, and take action on that?

President Shetler: It would be my feeling, my own personal feeling on it, is it is something that is working, it is taking a little bit more time for Council, but it’s something that, I think it’s part of our responsibility and our job to take up and I would like for us to continue the program through the year 2010 as well. Do I have any other questions or comments?

Councilmember Lloyd: My understanding, it would just keep in effect unless the Council chose to rescind it. But, I mean, if we wanted to reiterate it in January of ‘10, we could do it that way.

President Shetler: Right. That’s correct. Okay, we’ll move on. Any other comments, then?

President Shetler: We’ll move on to the next which is a resolution to appeal for property tax shortfall. What I wanted to bring up here, and I just, basically, I think Mr. Weaver is – back in September, I think it was September 2^nd, Jonathan, if you want to come forward. I had mentioned at one of our budget hearing meetings about the possibility of reducing the tax levy on the monies that come in every year for the assessment. And because the reassessments are done now on a continually rolling basis rather than done once every five or ten years, there wasn’t the need to have the levy quite so high, that we could save the taxpayers, perhaps if we rolled that back a little bit. And I think we’ve accumulated 1.2 – 1.3 million dollars in there so far that we have in the balance.

President Shetler: Yes. And just wondering if, perhaps, what I think, checking into that, what we need is the Auditor and the Assessor to sign off on that to send that to the Department of Finance on that, and I just wanted to know if you could, if you’re in agreement to that and would work along with us on that?

Jonathan Weaver: Uh, you know, I wasn’t – good morning, Jonathan Weaver, Vanderburgh County Assessor – I wasn’t aware of the initial conversation, so I wasn’t aware what all that was about. I’m open for discussion about it. I did receive a letter from the Auditor’s office, but my questions were not answered about that letter. So...it’s something we could talk about.

President Shetler: Right, it’s my understanding, if we don’t act on it very quickly, the taxpayers will lose that opportunity to save about a quarter of a million dollars. And I guess if I recall, and I’m going to be in kind of round numbers here. We have a balance in that fund right now, somewhere between 1.2 and 1.3 million dollars. I think the budgeted expenses for that are roughly close to half a million dollars, 450 – half a million, I’m not exactly sure what the nickels and dimes are there, the change is, and what I would be proposing is that we keep the tax levy at something that would bring in maybe about half the amount of money there so that the other half could draw off of that balance until we get the balance down after two or three years, down to about 6 or $700,000. And that’s capitalizing on the fact that we have the rolling assessments now and that we have a restructured Assessor’s office that probably lends itself a little bit more to doing it on an ongoing basis. We don’t have this big rush every five or ten years when you have to do it. And again, it’s the way to save the taxpayers $250,000 approximately a year. And I think that, basically, explains it. I don’t know, there might be some more detail into it than that, and I don’t know what your questions were, specifically.

Jonathan Weaver: Uh, not, wasn’t...not at this second I don’t have any questions. I did have questions I did pose to the Auditor’s office on what it would do for the taxpayers, and how much it could save the taxpayers, and they were unable to answer that question for me. You know, like I said, I’m willing to talk about this. This is the first I’m hearing about it, like it’s being brought up upon me in a public forum, so we can sit down and talk about it. I’m open to that idea.

Bill Fluty: Tom, I’d like to clarify a couple statements Jonathan has made. It was in the budget hearings that you asked how we could go about reducing that levy because we have 1.4 million dollars in reserve and we’re taxing over 400,000 and using about 300,000. So, unnecessarily overtaxing is, I guess, where you were headed with that. I wrote the letter to Jonathan on September 25^th, just stating the facts, because of the rolling reassessment, the balance of 1.4 million, reducing that levy in half to bring in $214,000 opposed to the 428,000, and his response was, can you guarantee, he asked me if you can guarantee that would help the taxpayers or I can read it, if you’d like me to: Can you guarantee a substantial reduction in the tax rate if this were to happen and can you guarantee that this will substantially help the taxpayers? My answer back was, because of the reasons cited in the letter, I believe this is the right action to take. No other correspondence came from Jonathan. We made cuts, very small cuts in supply line items, contractual line items, and it is the cumulative total of all those cuts that make a difference. This is a chance to make a cut over 200,000 –

Bill Fluty: Excuse me, let me finish Jonathan. This is a time to cut over 200,000 out of one particular line item that has a direct effect on all taxpayers. So, for those reasons, I believe I did answer those questions clearly enough, which he should understand those –

Jonathan Weaver: – you said for the reasons indicated. You didn’t answer my questions specifically, which is why the –

Bill Fluty: I think it was obvious that a $200,000 cut would be a benefit to the taxpayers. So that’s how I answered those. But I just wanted to say, I did respond.

President Shetler: That point was something I brought up myself during the budget hearings because I recognized that it was a way that we could save and I felt like we were going through and trying to save a thousand here, $200 there, and five, that this was some big meat here, if you will, that we’ll be able to save, you know, taxpayers some 200 to a quarter of a million dollars, and it is going to take – the more I got involved into it and found out what it would take to reduce that levy, it would take the cooperation between you and our Auditor. You may have, I know you were present that day, but you may have left when I asked that question and brought the subject up, I’m not sure –

President Shetler: – because our minutes don’t reflect if you were present at the moment. But anyway, it is a concern that I have, and again, we have until, I think, December 31^st to get that information up to Indianapolis so that they can roll that back, so I guess where I’m posing the question today is, if you’re willing to sign on board with that to help, you know, reduce that tax levy back a little bit then, again, it’s something that I feel like would be –

Jonathan Weaver: And that’s my concern over this whole thing. If I’m 50% of the piece, why didn’t we sit down and talk about this instead of just sending a letter to me or why couldn’t we sit down as the County Council body with the Auditor and myself and talk about the benefits instead of just hearing them right at this second?

Bill Fluty: At the September 2^nd meeting, they asked me questions on that, asked me how that would be done. I told them it would be done by a letter, that it would have to be sent to the DLGF, signed by the Auditor and the Assessor. I believed you had information on that fact. I sent the letter as they requested just starting that process out. So I did what I was directed to do by the Council. You elect to sign or not to sign. You still have that option.

President Shetler: He brought a copy of that letter and no action has really been taken. This is our last official meeting between now and the end of the year and after that, the taxpayers lose out on that opportunity to save that quarter of a million dollars. I felt that it was important to get it going and it’s our last chance to get it done since I hadn’t heard anything from the request that we had made back in September. So –

Jonathan Weaver: And I guess if this is such a huge, you know, decision, why am I, why didn’t we talk about this last month during the meeting...in, when you voted in November or October?

President Shetler: Well, again, it was brought up on two different occasions in September, once in a public meeting and a second time, you know, by letter to you that I had been copied on, and I just felt that you were probably in the process of working on it, and that’s what I’m asking you. And I guess you’re telling me today that you’re not, that you have not been working on it, and I guess my next question is, is there any intention to get the ball rolling on it or to do anything, or what is your pleasure today?

Jonathan Weaver: I kind of felt my response from the Auditor was that he didn’t answer my questions, but now you seem to be answering my questions...I can work with you.

Bill Fluty: Just back to that, Jonathan, I did answer your questions, told you the reasons why I felt it was the right thing to do.

Jonathan Weaver: You didn’t answer those specific questions that I emailed to you. You said it was in the previous correspondence.

President Shetler: Okay well, bottom line here, for the taxpayers’ sake, I mean, you are willing to sign on board and get this going so that we can reduce that tax levy?

Councilmember Sutton: Can I ask a question here? We’re talking about the Reassessment fund, now what is the present levy?

President Shetler: The present levy is about $428,400 a year. That’s what we had projected for 2010.

Councilmember Sutton: I guess maybe I’m talking about the rate. Do you know what that is?

President Shetler: I don’t know what the rate would be. I just know what it translates into dollars.

Jonathan Weaver: We use it for everything else besides salaries, comes out of that. So we’re talking about contractual services, technology, travel, office supplies...and that sort.

President Shetler: The budget for it, this might help, Councilman, the budget for that is $317,300 for next year. In other words, we are putting $111,100 more into it next year, and we have a balance of almost $1.5 million.

Councilmember Sutton: Right. And this year, we’ve had appropriations of 536, 536,000 and some change, at least according to the report that we’ve got here. And the budget, you said for next year, you say is –

Councilmember Sutton: So we’ve got a healthy balance there. Did the Pictometry come out of this fund, costs related to that?

Jonathan Weaver: Yes. It was an additional appropriation that was made this year. It’s included in the 2010 budget.

Jonathan Weaver: Now, I don’t know if half that is split with the other department heads in the county, but that’s the balance of the remaining, of the contract.

Councilmember Sutton: Right. The...so, trying to reduce that balance down based upon what you’re proposing here over what period of years, how much are you talking about in total? You’re saying a quarter of a million –

Councilmember Sutton: Are you talking about 2010 or are you talking about a certain amount moving forward, what are you...

President Shetler: I think, basically, we were talking about cutting that levy in half, so pretty close to half, so that it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $215,000 a year that we would be saving the taxpayers.

Bill Fluty: Essentially, you would be using your cash balance to some degree to make up the – I think you’re bringing in 215 plus –

Bill Fluty: You can’t use it for anything else and holding, whether you believed that holding that much cash balance is prudent or not, or let it go down, and then you can review this on a yearly basis as needs – you remember that reassessments were every four years or I think sometimes went longer, and there was a higher dollar amount that went out to do a total reassessment of the whole county. Now we do rolling reassessments, which I believe they’re 20 percent, I think, is what they do, and the cost has gone down.

President Shetler: Basically, we’re maintaining a balance of five times what our annual expenses are and, I mean, you know, when you get down to it and you look at what we did before on some of the other funds, I mean, this is a good amount of money that we can return to the taxpayers now.

Councilmember Sutton: Right. I understand your point and I guess what, maybe what I’m just trying to get a sense of, wouldn’t this be an appropriate time as well, I mean, if we look at just the historic patterns of how that fund has been used, and what those cash balances are, we’re reducing that by $215,00 for 2010, we’re still going to have a pretty healthy balance, I guess, in 2010, is there something maybe we want to look at over an extended span of time, say three years, in terms of how we want to look at how that fund is being used or are you believing that by reducing that by half on the levy on that, and looking at historic patterns, then they will begin to balance out at that time by reducing it in half, and then at some point in time, then revisiting that balance after a period of time? Is that what you’re proposing?

Bill Fluty: Obviously, I mean, that’s your pleasure to look at this at any time if there are new things coming up which you may have to purchase. But you have a million, almost a million and a half dollars now, and left with the current rate you have in place, if you don’t change it, you’ll have more than a million and a half dollars in there next year. Is that prudent, is that fair to the taxpayers, is the question. We’ve reduced the general fund, this is another place we can reduce and lower the tax rate and the burden on the taxpayer. It’s just your pleasure if you’d like to do it, if you believe that that 1.5 is just a little, is too much to hold as a cash balance.

President Shetler: And the issue is that these are fairly restricted funds, that can only be used for a limited amount of items and so it’s not really prudent to be able to hold a large cash balance in a very restricted fund, would be to do that more in the general fund where you have a more wide open area to utilize those funds for, but in this given area, it’s fairly restricted. So it doesn’t –

President Shetler: The request today, actually the request back in September that I’d made, is basically to look at rolling that levy back so that we cut that somewhat in half, start working off of the savings that we’ve accumulated over the past several years and –

Councilmember Sutton: I mean, are you looking for the Auditor, the Assessor to put together a request –

Councilmember Sutton: To come to an agreement on that? On the Council’s side, I mean, what are we, what are you requesting from the Council on our end?

President Shetler: Well, basically, I wanted, in essence, just to kind of bring it up so that, you know, to see if Mr. Weaver was in agreement on it. If he was in agreement on it, then we have no question. If he’s not, perhaps we needed to do a resolution to ask as a joint body to get that done. So that’s the issue today.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, I mean, I guess we’ve got the Personnel & Finance meeting at the end of the year. Other than that, we don’t really have another action or another meeting where we would be able to act on a resolution if it was coming from the Council. So I’m still trying to get an idea what you’re looking for here.

Councilmember Bassemier: Yeah, I understand that, of course, both the Auditor and the Assessor has to be in agreement on this and, obviously, you think you’ve been blind sided here today. I just wonder if we had enough time, if maybe you and the Auditor, you’d rather have an audience than to send information back and forth by a letter, maybe some time in the next week you and Bill, and maybe the Finance Chairman, a couple more, and maybe sit down and talk about this and maybe come to terms because what I’m reading today, there’s no way you’re going to okay this because you feel like you’ve been blind sided.

Jonathan Weaver: Well, I do feel like I was being blind sided, you know, if there was such a time crunch on this, again, you had October and November to talk to me about this. You know, I’m all about saving taxpayer dollars. We’ve cut $200,000 from our 2010 budget, we’ve been under budget hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last two years, so...

Councilmember Kiefer: Mr. Assessor, I do appreciate your concerns about, you know, you’d like to have good communication, but to me this seems like a no brainer. As a matter a fact, I think cutting 50 percent is not enough. I mean, we’ve got 1.5 million. Why not just cut out the entire 300 and some odd thousand out of the budget? We’d still have 1.2 million left over. I mean, this is the year that taxpayers are suffering in a bad economy, there’s no reason not to give them the full benefit immediately and, you know, in future years we may not be in an economic crisis, so I say, give them the full benefit, cut out the entire 300 and some thousand, and hopefully you’ll agree with that and you guys can get together and get this done. That’s my opinion.

Councilmember Raben: Well, a quick comment on that. We still have to appropriate what he needs as a budget for next year. If you were saying --

Bill Fluty: In essence, what you would be doing if you would zero that rate down to zero, you would be, all the, everything that you’d budgeted for the reassessment next year would come out off the cash balance. So there would be no taxes due for reassessment next year, if that’s your –

Councilmember Kiefer: And we’ve got plenty of money in our cash balance, so I don’t see why –

Councilmember Sutton: Well, but we know we will, obviously, need that fund in future years. The balance is heavy, but if you eliminate that altogether, --

Councilmember Kiefer: You’re still three times the amount of what we’re budgeting.

Councilmember Sutton: Right, but what it would take to bring that fund, you’re talking about a –

Councilmember Kiefer: And my point is, in future years, our economy is going to be in better shape. This is the year that taxpayers need that, more than any. And so if we’ve got the luxury of having 1.5 million, why not do it? We’ll still have plenty of money left in it, approximately 1.5 million, we should be in great shape. It seems like a no brainer to me.

Councilmember Raben: Just a procedural question. I mean, the action that, what is required by us to reduce the rate? By this board?

Councilmember Raben: So I’m trying to answer a question that was raised I think by you at some point earlier in the discussion that I don’t think this Council has to take any action. I guess it just comes back to the question, you know, what’s decided amongst, so really, the Assessor and the Auditor fix this rate either way, right?

Bill Fluty: Back in, I just want to reference September 2^nd when I was asked to do this and I sent the letter, as I was asked to do, basically, this letter was to go to Tim Rushenberg, and that’s how it was proposed. And I signed it and scanned it and sent it to Jonathan to be signed if he was in agreement. To lower or raise this levy, takes a letter signed by the Auditor and the Assessor to be sent to the DLGF for their determination. So that’s where we are today.

Councilmember Goebel: Since this Council really has no power in this, can the Assessor and Auditor agree to meet between now and maybe next week, give a report back and then maybe work this out? I don’t know what we’re doing here right now discussing it, actually.

President Shetler: Well, I think it’s important to at least know that we’re going to get some kind of agreement that they will work it out and it was brought to my attention that the request that we had made on September 2^nd had been followed up on, but it had dropped. The ball had been dropped along the way and I just wanted to make sure that that ball got picked back up again and started down the court so that –

Councilmember Goebel: I understand, and I think everyone is in agreement that something can be done to help the taxpayers. But these two gentlemen can sit down and come back to us now, I think, if they both publically say they’re going to meet.

Jonathan Weaver: And to clarify, I wasn’t at that September 2^nd meeting when that topic came up, and I didn’t receive the letter until September 25^th.

Bill Fluty: You instigated this by asking ways to reduce and I’ve given you this option, so it’s just reporting back to where we are on this.

President Shetler: And I apologize. My intent was not any blind siding or anything, it was that, well, time is becoming of the essence. It was two months ago since the letter was sent. Its been almost three months ago since I actually brought the subject up, and I know that if we don’t do this by December 31, the taxpayers lose the opportunity. So this was the best opportunity to get this thing rolling again, get the discussion on the table so that we could move forward on it and what I needed then is a commitment that both of you guys are going to be willing to get this somehow accomplished. I didn’t go for the whole enchilada of zeroing it down because I felt like that may have been a little bit more, although Joe is exactly right, this is probably the best time to do that. The taxpayers are in a hurt, we all are. But I felt like it would be most prudent and a compromise position to look at splitting it somewhere in the middle there. So that’s what I was looking towards. And I get, we’re getting from you today that you are in agreement of the concept of cutting down the tax or the levy so that the taxpayers will save on it and you will meet with our Auditor and get this all worked out then?

Jonathan Weaver: And I appreciate you bringing it up to my attention again and I’ve learned more in the last twenty minutes standing up here than through my conversation with you. So now I understand a lot better and I’m willing to, we’ll probably sit down Friday, right?

Councilmember Raben: You know, as far as this body is concerned, you know, we have different levies and we’ve adjusted those back and forth. We’ve done that a time or two with the Bridge rate, with the Cum Bridge rate. We’ve reduced it and then had to increase it a few years later, so it’s not unprecedented to adjust rates depending on what the times are and the needs are.

Councilmember Lloyd: Just real quickly, this has been a topic of conversation with the Council and the Auditor and Assessor going back several years, because I know even when Cheryl Musgrave was Assessor there was talk well, we need to keep this level of cash high because of the GIS, because of computerization. So there was some thought that well, we’d better hold that off for those reasons. But here we are, we’ve got the Pictometry system moving forward. It just seems like this is an opportunity to reduce property taxes for taxpayers whether it’s two cents on a bill or one and a half cents, if you can knock it down, that will be a benefit to the taxpayers to the tune of $250,000. I mean, I’m in favor of it. I hope the rest of the Councilmembers are in favor of it, and I would like to see Mr. Weaver and Mr. Fluty sign the letter, get it up to the DLGF.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, could we have both of them do this: first of all maybe what this Council could do is make a recommendation on when this business needs to be taken care of, when it needs to be concluded. Can you guys meet before December the 15^th?

Councilmember Sutton: And at that meeting, Auditor Fluty brings a – well, he has already prepared a draft that he sent to you before that meeting, you prepare a draft of what your version is, that you’ve sent to him, prior to that meeting, when you sit down, you have something to talk about and our Finance Chair could sit in on that meeting, as well. Maybe our President of the Council could sit in, but come to that meeting with drafts that both of you have already reviewed and have this taken care of, say, by the 15^th of this month. Is that possible?

Bill Fluty: The draft I’ve sent will remain the same unless you have some other, unless the Council has some other direction. Right now, the letter was to cut that levy in half and that’s how I responded.

Jonathan Weaver: Fine, we have a DLGF conference call. I assume you’re sitting in on it?

Councilmember Goebel: Question again, can you two sit down together and hammer something out? I think you both have to sign the same piece of paper.

President Shetler: Okay, next is a request from the Prosecutor’s office to fill a vacancy.

Stan Levco: Good morning. For the record, I’m Stan Levco, the Prosecutor, and I’m here to fill a vacancy or I’m here to ask you to fill a vacancy. Do you want me to say anything more in the way of an opening statement?

Councilmember Kiefer: Sure. Mr. Prosecutor, is this a necessary position, you feel like it’s one of these positions, I’m assuming it is, it’s a full-time deputy prosecutor?

Stan Levco: Well, it’s a more complicated answer than you might expect. The vacancy is for a child molesting prosecutor. But I’m going to fill that in-house, so one of my deputies now is going to become the child molesting prosecutor, so this new position will essentially take over that, which will be misdemeanor court and handling court matters, trying cases, things like that, but mostly misdemeanor court.

Councilmember Lloyd: Roughly, how many child molesting cases are they prosecuting? How is your statistical brain?

Councilmember Lloyd: Okay, but, I mean, when we talked, I mean, it just seems like we do need to replace this position and we’re going to add some full-time, changing from part-time in the Public Defender’s office, so why would we want the Prosecutor to be short-handed in that regard?

Councilmember Raben: A sign of the times is the recent news on the jail, or the population growth, so I’m sure this would have a huge effect on that. But since I mention that, is there, I hope we get some renewed interest among your office and the court system along with the Sheriff to maybe get more interested – maybe that’s not the right word, but do something to speed the process up to move people through our system quicker and send them off to DOC and what have you. And I know this is an important step to do that, but again, I hope we’re meeting maybe more regularly than we were six months ago with all those players to ensure that we’re doing everything we can to move people through the system.

Stan Levco: Yeah, the Sheriff and I have been emailing the last couple of days and Judge Heldt, and I know we’re going to have a meeting relatively soon, certainly before the first of the year. I’m concerned about it and I know everyone else is, too.

Councilmember Raben: It seems like when it’s discussed, things seem to happen a little quicker, then maybe we kind of forget about it but I’m not saying that any part of it is your fault, any part of it is the court’s fault, actually, none of it is the Sheriff’s fault, but – well, you know, again, he’s charged with housing them, not letting them through the system. But, you know, again if we could –

President Shetler: Stan, in that area of work there, that segment, how many attorneys do you have that are actually performing in that misdemeanor area there?

Stan Levco: There’s one main misdemeanor head, and that’s the person right now that’s going to go into the child molesting. Then there’s about four or maybe five other attorneys that will do one misdemeanor session per week or maybe two.

President Shetler: So if we didn’t fill this, basically what you’re talking about is being short one person, so that you’d be kind of gathering up, everybody would have to do another 20 - 25 percent of the workload in order to make up for that shortfall?

President Shetler: I’m trying to quantify it somehow here. But basically we’re talking about a department of five people in an area and they do different things.

Stan Levco: No, but because one of the persons who would do the one misdemeanor court a week would be head of the gun program, so that person is not a misdemeanor deputy, they just do one session a week. Another person is the person in charge of domestic violence does a domestic violence session, so they do one of those a week. So they’re really not a misdemeanor deputy.

Stan Levco: I mean, theoretically, I could go to misdemeanor court, and that’s very theoretical. I could do misdemeanor court once a week.

Stan Levco: I can answer that but it’s going to be misleading. We filed roughly 2,000 felonies a year, actually more like 2,300. And there’s roughly 10,000 misdemeanors a year. Now if you had one misdemeanor deputy and said their caseload is 10,000 a year, that’s meaningless because all they’re doing there is sitting there and most of them are just being processed. So when you talk about caseload, it’s more for felonies than misdemeanors, so there’s 2,000 felonies, there’s roughly 20 full-time deputies, so you could say it’s a hundred a person, but –

President Shetler: In comparing that to private, I mean, I have no idea, I mean, what somebody in defense law might do in a – I mean, would that be about what most of them do in private or would that be...

Stan Levco: A criminal private attorney is paid on a per case basis. He might, he does other things besides criminal work, too. I don’t think many –

President Shetler: Well, do you know what the average caseload might be for a private attorney just doing a variety of general practice type work?

President Shetler: Well, I don’t know if he’s – I don’t know if he’s doing any criminal at all.

Stan Levco: Well, do you mean a private civil attorney who does some criminal work?

President Shetler: Yeah, I’m just trying to quantify this somewhat to determine whether or not your people are working about the same or more or less than what private is and if there is any room, you know, in the future or in this position and I’m trying to determine whether or not this position is fully needed. Now it sounds to me like in every situation that you’ve discussed so far it is, because I’m getting a feeling here that we’re talking about people who are – while you’ve got different departments and different segments here and I don’t know how all of your; and exactly how many employees that you’re talking about because you’ve got part-time, full-time and everything else, but it sounds to me as if you’re talking about a very specific job that needs to be covered here and I’m just trying to, in my mind, quantify that somewhat and compare that to some kind of outside mark there that your guys are already handling 20 percent more cases than what a guy would if he were generally in private or whatever, and for the amount of money that they’re making, that’s pushing them pretty hard.

Councilmember Sutton: Tom, probably a more comparable measure might be against another county as opposed to maybe private practice.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, private practice you pick and chose what you want to – they have to take every case that comes through their office, not by their choosing. Private practice, you can select what you may – so maybe another county might be an appropriate way to –

Stan Levco: See, and that’s the closest thing, but if you tried to do that, I’d say that’s not right either because when a public defender has a case, all he has to do is defend that case. We do a lot more things other than prosecute cases. We decide not to prosecute cases. It takes time to evaluate cases and a case that comes in, our investigators look at and decide not to prosecute. The public defender never sees that case. Then you’ve got a lot of private attorneys – well, that’s kind of a different thing, but a lot of private attorneys take cases that public defenders don’t take but we are prosecuting all those cases, too. But relatively, and I can’t give you numbers, but relatively, I think the public defender’s case load is not much different than ours and I’ve always thought that’s not, shouldn’t be the case because we do more than the public defender. We have more duties than the public defender. But if you want to...

President Shetler: Alright, thank you, Stan, I think. Alright, anybody else have any questions?

President Shetler: Okay, we’ve got a motion from Councilman Bassemier and a second by Councilman Kiefer. Okay, any other questions? Alright, all in favor signify by saying aye.

President Shetler: The next one is Jonathan, our County Assessor, with a request.

Jonathan Weaver: Good morning, I’m Jonathan Weaver, your Vanderburgh County Assessor. We’re asking to replace an employee for an existing line item position that was left vacant by someone that left for the private sector on October 31^st. We are able to get through the rest of this year not filling that position. That will save about $5,300 but we’d like your permission to hire someone starting January 1^st. This is the third staffer we’ve had this year leave for the private sector. We gave back a position to you guys in January, we gave back another position to the county back in August. Prior to the assessor consolidation, we had 52 employees and now we have 40. You may recall that our part-time budget this year was zero. We used two unpaid college interns this summer, working on a part-time basis and then tomorrow we start interviewing candidates from the community work experience program, or otherwise known as the Welfare to Work program to see if we can tap into that resource and to get more bodies into the office. We initiate and help bill over $160 million in property taxes and as a revenue generating office, we picked up an additional $6 million so far in assessed value over the last three months since we started using Pictometry. And if you conservatively use the 1.5 percent cap, that’s an extra $80,000 in revenue that we’re bringing back into the general fund. As you may recall, the first year of Pictometry cost nearly $80,000, and so in the first three months of us using it, it’s basically paid for the first year already. We’ve been hundreds of thousands of dollars under budget for the last two years as I stated in the Assessor plan I gave you on February 25^th. We cut over $200,000 from the 2010 budget and with the talk of the pay scale changing, I assume this new employee will save more taxpayer money by being paid less, entry level. So that’s our request, I appreciate your time, I’ll take any questions or comments you may have.

Councilmember Lloyd: I was looking at the salary ordinance, the different individuals with personal property, what are the duties of this person? I guess you’ve got, like a First Deputy Business Personal Property is one position, and you’ve got Deputy Assessor Business Personal Property is another position, you’ve got Personal Property Coordinator is another position, Deputy Assessor Personal Property Data Analysis is another position, Personal Property Inheritance, which I know is a separate situation, and then you’ve got two of them that deal with mobile homes.

Jonathan Weaver: This person, we actually swapped out earlier this year with another person, so this person went to real estate, the other person went to personal property. So they have a personal property title, line item description, but they’re working in the real estate department.

Councilmember Lloyd: Out of the property parcels, I don’t know if you know a percentage or an approximate number of how many are personal property?

Councilmember Lloyd: So 81,000, roughly 9,500 personal property. Are those more labor intensive than other for assessments?

Jonathan Weaver: The real estate is probably more labor intensive. They’re both huge assets to bringing in revenue for the county. There’s certain times of the year where each department is bombarded.

Councilmember Lloyd: I know, I mean, from my private sector experience, I know we work with some of our business clients that fill out personal property returns, so you’ve got all the machinery, other assets like that that aren’t real.

Jonathan Weaver: This was a loss, though, to our real estate department because, like I said, they were swapped. So personal property, I feel is staffed well at this point in time. I’d just like your permission to hire for the real estate department.

Councilmember Lloyd: So the request is for a personal property deputy assessor, is that the request?

Jonathan Weaver: That happens to be the line item description, that person would be working in real estate.

Councilmember Lloyd: These were some of the positions that were eliminated and then brought back, does that make sense, in the beginning of the year? Do you remember that?

Councilmember Lloyd: Well, they were, I guess, they were eliminated in December and brought back in January. There were three positions.

Councilmember Lloyd: Deputy Assessor Deeds, Deputy Assessor Personal Property, and Real Estate Deputy. So is this, this would be a COMOT IV, then?

Jonathan Weaver: It would be, I guess my understanding is that the new person would make less than this person that left. Is that...

Councilmember Lloyd: Well, it would be a COMOT IV under the new schedule. But, so you don’t see any situation where this could be, this position could be eliminated and the duties transferred?

Jonathan Weaver: Not at this point in time. We eliminated a position in January and then we eliminated another one in August, and we’re down – if you consider at all when we were nine different Assessor offices, there were 52 employees, and now we’re down to 40, as one big office.

Councilmember Raben: And we paid out their line for all their time and everything?

Councilmember Lloyd: The other possibility would be leave it vacant until things get busy in March or April.

Jonathan Weaver: Well, things are busy continually. We’re trending now for ‘10 pay ‘11, so we’re working on that. You know, we have mandates to get to the state and I think we’re finally on the timetable where I want to be on, is when we submit to the state in May, get approved in June, so...

President Shetler: I know it came up, I think, during Pictometry back in the spring when we talked about teams and I think that at that time it was brought up about sending two people out on teams. Are we still doing that or did we cut that back to one, I think it used to be one for years.

President Shetler: Yeah. Will you be using, continue to utilize two people then on those teams?

Jonathan Weaver: It’s good – yes. It’s good for – you need someone when you’re measuring the structures. It’s good to have a second set of eyeballs. It’s good for safety purposes. It’s good if you get into a he said/she said sort of situation with a taxpayer, if there’s another witness there. So we feel this is the appropriate thing to do.

President Shetler: Are we getting twice the amount of work finished? Are they able to do things quicker, and go through the properties, and measuring and all that stuff a little quicker?

President Shetler: If we didn’t have two people on a team going out to do that physical surveying and stuff, and we went back to the system that we had traditionally for years and years with the one man teams and stuff, would it be necessary to have this position filled?

Jonathan Weaver: I don’t know if I can guarantee that other offices prior to the consolidations sent just one person, so I don’t know if that’s a –

President Shetler: Yeah, I don’t know that they always sent one person, but I think, generally speaking, I think there was.

Jonathan Weaver: In the past we’ve had someone’s car stolen. We’ve had guns pointed at people, we’ve had, even when I was out with them back in January, I went on the field visits, a pit bull hopped a fence. You know, there’s hazards out there.

President Shetler: Yeah well, I think at the time Councilman Raben brought up the point that, you know, I know the meter readers, water, you’ve got postmen, all those kinds of services that go door to door and things as well, that they kind of encounter some of those same kind of threats that you’re talking about and they basically still maintain a singular –

Jonathan Weaver: And as I said in the past, what we’ve been able to do in four hours in the field, we’ve done in 15 minutes using Pictometry. So we are utilizing our technology, that’s brought in again –

Councilmember Goebel: I do have a question about the title: it’s Real Estate Deputy Assessor? I think it was brought up whether, is it different than the request here –

Jonathan Weaver: It was ever evolving with the transition and this person originally did start out in personal property. We felt, as we looked, did our reviews, periodic reviews, we found that this person would be better in real estate and the other person that we switched them, so their titles didn’t change, but their job duties, what they were doing at the time. So it would be for real estate.

President Shetler: Okay, any other questions on the motion? Yes, Councilman Lloyd?

Councilmember Lloyd: Sounds like that should go to Job Study then if the duties have been changed. I mean, maybe the position needs to be re-rated. Or are you just saying it’s an open position and you’re wanting to hire for a different position than what you mentioned in your letter? In your letter, you stated the position is a Personal Property/Deputy Assessor, and now you’re saying that’s not true.

Jonathan Weaver: The intent is to replace someone in the real estate department.

Jonathan Weaver: This new person would be working in the real estate department, so –

President Shetler: You’re going to shift somebody within the department to another position and then fill that vacancy? Is that what’s going on?

Jonathan Weaver: That I haven’t thought about but the intent of requesting for the new employee was to help out the real estate department, they’d be doing real property duties.

Councilmember Sutton: We’ve already got the position there and you’re taking someone and you’re moving them to that and then you’re filling that personal property, I mean, that’s your call to make in terms of how you want to move the people around, but if the position you’re requesting has different responsibilities, different duties, I mean, you will need to bring that back to Job Study. But if the position already described exists, that’s probably a non-issue, I guess, on our end.

Councilmember Bassemier: Jonathan, is it a new position? I mean, were we changing a line item here?

Jonathan Weaver: Oh no, this is a position that was funded through 2009 and it’s funded next year for 2010.

President Shetler: Is this a position, though, that was vacated back in the spring or in early winter or late winter, whatever?

President Shetler: And that position is what you’re trying to fill here, the same title, same job description?

Councilmember Lloyd: Personal Property/Deputy Assessor position 1000-1090-1730, but now what you’re indicating is this person actually, they didn’t work on personal property, they worked in real property?

Councilmember Lloyd: Okay, so it actually is a different job description than what they were, but it just had not been brought to Council or we didn’t have any idea about that.

Councilmember Raben: More of a job title, which we can make an amendment to the job title. The duties are – the job description is the only thing different.

Councilmember Lloyd: There is going to be a Job Study meeting December 16. I mean, we could look at this then, if that’s appropriate. I don’t know.

Councilmember Sutton: I mean, if you’re, it’s been operating under this job description, I mean, if Council went ahead and approved it and you bring it before the Job Study to make sure everything is in line with what we know that position to be as far as duties, there’s no reason why we couldn’t take action on this position here.

President Shetler: That’s what I was going to suggest is perhaps we could go ahead and take it subject to Job Study’s approval since we have a motion.

President Shetler: Okay, any other questions or comments? Do you want to amend the motion to reflect subject to Job Study’s approval then? On that?

Councilmember Sutton: Rather than make it subject to, I would say in my motion, I would say something to the fact that the position description needs to go before Job Study as a part of this approval.

Councilmember Sutton: As a part of approving this, that this position description would be updated at the Job Study meeting.

President Shetler: Okay, it’s been moved and seconded. Any questions? Comments? Roll call please.

Councilmember Goebel: I think based on the fact that you’ve already eliminated two and you have your part-time cut out, I think it should go on to Job Study with that clarification. Yes.

Councilmember Kiefer: I’d prefer to vote after Job Study and then consider it. This person’s already been gone for over a month so I don’t know why we couldn’t just vote on this after Job Study. So with that, I vote no.

President Shetler: Yes. So, there being five ayes and two nays, the motion carries. Jonathan, then you got the date on that, December 16^th? Job Study?

Gary Heck: Gary Heck, Vanderburgh County Health department requesting permission to use federal funds to pay overtime for Health department employees that are working at an H1N1 clinic on Saturdays.

Councilmember Raben: Gary, a quick question: I think in your letter, you state that the grant will allow you to pay existing health department staff overtime compensation and/or hiring temporary vaccination staff.

Councilmember Raben: I know, but when you’re paying overtime, you’re paying them time and a half and –

Gary Heck: It’s cheaper than hiring the vaccinators that are paid at a higher hourly rate than county employees are paid. An average RN, when you hire them through a temporary service and you work them on weekends or holidays, it’s about $44 an hour.

Gary Heck: That’s where the contracts are. I mean, we have to go through the County Commissioners and the County Attorney to get contracts. And you have to use somebody who is legally allowed to vaccinate in the state of Indiana, and that’s either an RN or an LPN or some other, and the only ability we have to hire them is through temporary services who furnish staff to do that kind of work.

Councilmember Raben: Is that just an ordinance established by Vanderburgh County or –

Councilmember Raben: I understand that, that the person has to be registered or licensed to vaccinate, but is there anything – is the county, is it just a county ordinance that says we have to use a temporary service or is it –

Gary Heck: No, I guess we could go out and try to hire individual nurses on our own, but if the other services are paying them $44 an hour and we establish a rate of whatever, something substantially lower than $44 an hour, the chances of us being successful hiring somebody isn’t very good.

Councilmember Raben: I’d like to take that chance, though, I mean, if we’re talking $44 an hour for part-time. I think it’s worth taking that chance for, you know, to run an ad or something for –

Gary Heck: I guess I wish you’d have asked me this last week because we’ve got a clinic scheduled for this Saturday and then one the following Saturday. We did the math on it and it’s actually cheaper using our own staff and paying them time and a half than it is hiring under another system.

Councilmember Raben: ---- under you going through an employment firm. You know, I think you probably need to do what you’ve got to do for something that you already have in place for this weekend, but, you know, at $44 an hour, I think it would be worth my time to run an ad in the paper and see what we come up with.

Gary Heck: We solicited requests and we sent, turned those over to the County Attorney. I’d be happy to go back and try to do something else where the county, in essence, was looking to hire part-time nurses. I don’t know that I’ve got a part-time nurse job description. I mean, I’d have to go to Job Study, probably?

Councilmember Raben: I think it probably exists. I know we – well, I say I know, you know, we have nursing staff at the Jail. I don’t know if all those are full-time or not, but we probably have part-time nurses there as well, and I would have to believe that we’re probably not going through a service with those. But I could check on that.

Gary Heck: Well, the normal work, well, I understand. I will try to get that researched and come back with an answer for you.

Gary Heck: All of this is federal money. It’s not – there’s not a penny that will be spent out of local money for this particular clinic effort.

President Shetler: Not that I’m trying to burn through the federal treasury or anything like that, but –

Gary Heck: We aren’t either, but it’s all set up on a pro-rated basis, so we have ample federal funds to help pay for this and this will actually stretch those federal dollars by using county employees at time and a half.

Councilmember Goebel: Gary, is this basically what surrounding counties are – how they’re operating their clinics?

Gary Heck: There’s other counties that are doing weekend clinics. We’re trying to reach school age kids and this is the best way in our county to do it because we don’t have access to go to each individual school to try to do it and so this is the best way when the parents can be present to sign the consent form and be there with their child, while they’re being vaccinated. And so there are several other counties in Indiana that are doing this as well. I can’t speak for Kentucky or Illinois, but I know there’s other counties in Indiana that are doing it.

President Shetler: We have a second. Do we have any other questions or comments? All in favor, signify by saying aye.

President Shetler: Is anybody here from the Sheriff’s department? Next is amendments to the Salary Ordinance.

President Shetler: Well, since he wasn’t here right now, I didn’t know if we wanted to hold that off until –

Councilmember Raben: Well, I think there’s a – because of the time it takes to run background checks –

Councilmember Sutton: And training and pulling all those guys in at the same time, he discussed that last month, and the reasoning why he waited on some of them to bring them to us, so they have a training regimen, a schedule that they do follow and the way that they go through the hiring process. So probably if we delay this it’s going to really throw off that whole training schedule and I thought we were pretty much in agreement that we were supportive of bringing those all on at the same time.

Councilmember Bassemier: He said he’s not going to fill it ‘til the first quarter anyway of 2010.

President Shetler: Right. We can take it up, I didn’t know if anybody had any questions of the Sheriff.

Councilmember Raben: – which is part of the problem, you know, to even begin the process he has to (inaudible – microphone turned off), so it’s fairly critical, I mean, that we say yes or no today because it’s, you know, probably late February or early March before the background checks are completed and before you –

President Shetler: It’s been moved and seconded. Do I have any questions about the motion?

Councilmember Lloyd: Well, I just would like to have the Sheriff come in and explain what the seven deputies will be assigned to? But maybe we can get him at our next meeting.

President Shetler: Right, okay. Alright, we have a motion and a second. Are there any other questions? Comments? All in favor signify by saying aye.

President Shetler: Motion carries. And we’ll send a, usually Eric is here, but send a note to the Sheriff, then, to make sure he’s here at the next meeting so we can talk to him about that.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, Mr. President, everyone was given a copy of the December 2^nd amendments to the salary ordinance. I’m going to move that we amend salary line 1050-1300 Overtime as previously adopted. Under Jail 1051-1850 Union Overtime as previously approved, Community Corrections 1361-1530 Shift Differential as previously approved. Under Sheriff, amend salary lines as transfers were previously approved 1050-0015 Lieutenant at an 2009 annual salary of $57,799, 1050-0024 at $51,719, transfer was due to promotions and insufficient funds for the above salary lines. County Commissioners, amend salary line 1300-1120 County Attorney as previously approved. The amount of transfer approved is $3,193 based on an annual salary of $36,229. The annual base is $56,956, that’s less the $20,727 for health insurance and benefits. Under Health Department, salary line 2133-1980 Other Pay to pay the Health department staff to work hours, I’m going to insert part-time and overtime on vaccination clinics for the H1N1 vaccines. Overtime employees, should we continue that, will be paid at 1 ½ times their hourly rate. And then last, move that we approve the hiring of seven deputies to fill current vacancies. I make that in the form of a motion.

President Shetler: It’s been moved and seconded. Do you have any questions? All in favor, signify by saying aye.

President Shetler: Next is, I think we have several different people here and I don’t have any specific requests for speaking, but I think there’s a couple people here that do want to speak. Krista, I think you’re representing, perhaps, the Evansville Bar Association, if you wish to come forward, then.

Krista Lockyear: Thank you, Mr. President, members of Council. Krista Lockyear. For the record, I am here both personally and as president-elect of the Evansville Bar Association, with regard to the concern over the recently announced closing of the Clerk’s library. Yesterday we received notice that the Clerk’s library will be permanently closed on December 23^rd, and I had sent an email yesterday afternoon pretty late to President Shetler. I acknowledge here as a member of the Bar Association, and as a personal real estate attorney, and as president and part-owner of a title company, we don’t have a whole lot of background information. And I tried to get a hold of the Clerk, Susie Kirk. I understand she is out of town until tomorrow, so I haven’t had a conversation with her regarding the restructuring in her office. My understanding is that she had requested to fill a vacancy that was not approved and then did some shifting within the office, and that resulted in this closure. Until we can talk to Susie, I don’t really have a direct proposal for Council or request, but I would like you to be aware that if funding is the issue, we’re hoping that with the Clerk’s office and Council cooperation, we can get this library closing delayed or off the table completely. What this means to title companies, to attorneys, and to the public in general, is potentially a complete lack of access to public records that are older than five years old on closed cases. The public can get access to cases that are open without paying and the resort to closed cases, to get any access to information, is through the new Doxpop system. Doxpop is fantastic, it’s going to be a wonderful program for attorneys, we’re all supporting that program and happy to see that go online. But it is subscription based and pay based, so for title companies that do daily searches of buyers and sellers on real estate, there’s going to be an immediate fee and time delay on being able to access the records that we need. Should Doxpop show up a problem with a buyer or seller of real estate and additional records are necessary, we have to make a foyer request from the Clerk’s office, who then has seven days to respond. That’s going to be a pretty significant delay for lenders and customers that are interesting in transacting a real estate, refinance, purchase or sale. And the cost involved in that as well, something that consumers right now are fighting refinance costs, trying to get through the banks, through the appraisal process, and this is a potential additional burden to them when we can’t get public court records without paying additional fees for that. Again, my purpose is to bring this to your attention, to advise that we may be in front of you again asking for additional support for the Clerk’s office, and my hope is that within the next week or two, perhaps before your finance committee meeting, if that’s appropriate. we could meet with Susie Kirk, perhaps a committee member from Council, and see if we can come up with potential solutions to this problem because it really could have a devastating effect on bar members as well as the public.

President Shetler: Okay, thank you, Krista. Let me just, I guess quickly, because we dealt with this a couple of months back, I think it was back in October. Basically, this Council acted on one position that it was our understanding under questioning, that this was a general entry level type of position that was doing basic filing, answering telephones during lunch periods, and just filling in from one position to another as needed. Shortly after the decision was made, which I think was the first week of October, whatever, shortly thereafter, we received an email outlining the procedures that she was going to do in order to pick up the slack. Primarily, the burden was being placed at that time on the judge’s staffs in order to compensate for the workload being shifted. Now I’m one member of seven, but my thinking at the time was, that we’re dealing with an office that has 54 employees and that a person that is not with any specific task, but very generalized office type of work, that in today’s economic environment, all of us in private as well as in some cases in public, there are layoffs being done in Gary, Indiana and, you know, up north all across northern Indiana, there are communities that are laying firemen, policemen and everything else off. Fortunately, we’ve been prudent enough and I think wise in our hoarding monies back and saving and being able to do the right things, that we’ve avoided those. But we can see what the writing is on the wall for the next couple of years and we are trying our best to avoid any kind of real serious situation like that. So we came up with the hiring freeze. It really was meant in areas, if there is a specific task that takes a specific talent to do, that I don’t think any of us have had that in mind to eliminate those positions. This was never explained, it never did come, and this is kind of two – better than two months after the fact of this proposal, so I’m not sure really how it relates to it, but I think it had been corrected or rectified back in October through the judges because as far as I know, the judges had agreed that they would allow some of their staff to do some of their own filings and do some of this stuff that she was saying would be necessary to pick up the slack. So I’m thinking out of 54 employees, if they can’t squeeze together there a little bit and we’re talking about less than two percent of the workload being shared, again, I’m trying to quantify jobs. And I know that’s not always easy to do as Stan pointed out earlier to me, but the best we can possibly do and I felt like that was a reasonable request that was going on. None of us are in favor of this action and I shouldn’t speak for the other six, I apologize. But I think this was not the intent of this Council. Councilman Lloyd?

Councilmember Lloyd: Question for Ms. Lockyear. How many terminals are in that office?

Councilmember Lloyd: Okay, there are six and they’re logged on to like, CourtView, correct?

Councilmember Lloyd: And so this is free access for attorneys and those that deal with the courts?

Krista Lockyear: I think probably somebody from the title company that’s in that office daily should –

Councilmember Lloyd: So the Clerk’s employees, are they necessary to make sure somebody doesn’t haul the computers out? Why is that necessary?

Krista Lockyear: They indicate filing...truthfully, and I want to reiterate, we’re not here pointing fingers at Council or at the Clerk’s office, but we were all advised yesterday, I got in the mail the Doxpop is now online and available and that’s fantastic, and then I get the letter that permanently closed in less than a month, the Clerk’s library. And, you know, a lot of my emails and phone conversations yesterday were me just thinking out loud and I’m still doing that and without having the ability to sit down with Ms. Kirk to talk about what could be done, what other options are there, really the only thing that we could do at this point is bring to your attention that hey, wow, the library is now going to be closed permanently. This is a concern and we may be asking Council to help us address that concern.

Councilmember Lloyd: I think it might be helpful if you could provide a letter, maybe the use of the facility. Are there lines to get on those computers? Are they pretty heavily used or no?

Councilmember Kiefer: Hi, Krista. I guess not being real familiar with this, these computers, is it tied in to their network and you’re basically viewing documents on their network or is it tied into some kind of – I mean, I guess explain to me how it works. The Clerk enters documents and then you guys have access to those documents being entered because these computers are tied to their network?

Krista Lockyear: Yes, and it’s court records, it’s dockets, current pending cases, calendars of pending cases and all that, like I said, without subscription will be available on Doxpop, maybe even concerning is a judgement that’s five years old against a business or an individual in town. That is not available at all, you could get that now through the Clerk’s library, but you’re not going to be able to get that through Doxpop without a fee or making a foyer request.

Councilmember Kiefer: So the Clerk’s library is more, really, important to you for historic documents five years or older?

Krista Lockyear: That’s not necessarily true, however, with the Doxpop system, there is a replacement for open documents on a non-subscription basis. Now losing the computer terminals is probably a different issue. There’s one in the law library, that certainly couldn’t handle the demand that the public is going to need to have access to open cases, and I’m not sure if there are plans for replacement of the computers that are in there now.

Councilmember Kiefer: I guess I’m confused. Is her personnel that she’s eliminating, is it because she’s no longer entering that data or it’s just somebody that watches over the computers? I guess I’m confused on what, how it works.

Krista Lockyear: And I’m not sure, again, I have not been able to speak with her and don’t know the rationale and it may quite be that’s she’s got a wonderful solution for us, but the notice that we received was public records available through Doxpop, that the general public has limited access to current, without subscription to current cases through Doxpop and that the law library is down the hall. And again, this Council funds the law library, I know, and it’s a great public service, but there’s one computer in there that’s available for them to use.

Councilmember Raben: Well, maybe that’s what we need is to add, move one or two of these computers into the law library. But I have a quick question. The fee that’s associated with Doxpop, what is that fee (inaudible – microphone turned off).

Krista Lockyear: The subscriptions haven’t been opened yet. We’ve just been advised that it’s available.

Councilmember Raben: So we might be worried about something that’s not a big thing anyway, like, I mean, a lot of fees, you know, any fees associated with something like that are probably usually passed on to your clients anyway, aren’t they?

Krista Lockyear: Sometimes, yes, and again, refinance customers and banks are probably not going to appreciate that pass along either. And additionally, the public cannot get these records without access and fees, so, you know, there are a lot of unanswered questions, I do not deny that. And again, before finance committee, as I indicated, my hope would be to be able to get with Ms. Kirk to find out possibilities to have other resolutions available. And again, this is just that we know you aren’t meeting again before this closes as a full body, just an advice that it’s a big concern to us.

Councilmember Raben: Is it possible, I mean, you said that you are making an attempt to set up a meeting with her representing the Bar Association. Is the Bar Association’s thought or intent to reimburse the county for this person or...is that what you’re considering?

Krista Lockyear: We have not considered anything at this point. We’re just trying to get answers to the issues.

President Shetler: I might suggest, Councilman Lloyd is the liaison with the courts and he’s looking for something to do during the holiday season, I could tell from the look on his face, and perhaps Russ could get with you, Krista, and our County Clerk and come to a meeting of minds here and resolve this one way or another, whether it’s moving some terminals, whether it’s the centurion that’s watching over the six things in there, is part-time or whatever we do, but we can figure out a way that this can work.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, but, Councilman Lloyd, from my limited information I know about this, what I do know is that as people are going into the Clerk’s area and accessing these terminals, that’s the resource that they use to find out updates on cases, find out what the schedule is as things may change. That’s the source that they are utilizing. That will no longer be available to the public and if someone wants to find out if there’s been an update on their case, according to what we have been hearing here, they may have to wait a week or more before they can find out that information, so it does severely restrict access to what is public information right now. And what we eliminated here was not that position at all.

Councilmember Sutton: And if this is a way to get back at the Council using the office as a weapon, surely that’s not what we would support or in any way should be appreciated by the public. What we felt like was a very prudent decision on our part to try to streamline, in line with what we’ve done with every other office that’s come up here and asked for a request, just had the Assessor up here, you had 52 employees down to 40. We eliminated one person in the Clerk’s office and this is the response that we get back is restricting the access that the public and private business has to public information. I clearly would like to see some explanation of why that is the prudent action to take when that wasn’t the position that we eliminated.

President Shetler: You articulated my opening remarks much better than I did and I appreciate that, Councilman.

Don Fuchs: Mr. Shetler, if I may speak just for a moment here. My name is Don Fuchs, I’m an attorney here in Evansville, been practicing in this community for 30 years. My practice is real estate, I’m also a co-owner of a real estate company here. We have a number of individuals here in the audience today representing the title business here in our community. The thing I just wanted to go on the record for, again, as Krista said, no blame on this Council. My point is to bring to this Council’s attention, the significance of this issue of limiting access. In a title search we have to do, I’m giving you some general principles of law, a ten year search against the buyer and seller. And by statutory, Indiana statutory law, the County Clerk is required to have an index of those judgements. So for us to do a search for financial institutions or cash closing or whatever may be, we have to do a ten year search against anybody in the chain of title as to outstanding judgements. That information has to be available to us, so if that information by the County Clerk is not available to us, we can’t do our jobs. And this will have a significant impact on how transactions are done in this community. It would be like Ms. Tuley here, who is our County Recorder, saying we’re not going to have access available to abstractors and to the public of certain records. If she would say that, we’d come to a standstill also. So again, I just want, no blame here to this Council, but again, bringing the significance of this issue. This is of quite importance to us that we have full access to the Clerk’s records on judgements, otherwise, we can’t do our job.

Don Fuchs: No, Mr. Kiefer, I have not. I, like Krista, I got an email this morning saying, about this, and so that’s what I came over here. We want to do that, we just felt this would be at least an initial –

Councilmember Kiefer: Sure, thank you for bringing it to our attention, I appreciate that.

Jeff Ahlers: One thing that I guess in talking about these documents, I guess I’m not sure what the Clerk’s office is saving because my understanding is, in fact, I think if you make a freedom of information act request in person, I think they have to furnish the records within 24 hours. So it seems to me that somebody in that office is going to be busy running around furnishing documents. And so I guess I’m kind of wondering, I guess I’m not sure what’s being saved here in terms of employee time. It seems like instead of helping with computers, the person is now going to be running around pulling records, so I don’t know, that may be something that Mr. Lloyd, when you look into it, that you need to figure out how that’s working.

Councilmember Raben: Is that how it was stated earlier or was it, if there is a discrepancy with the data that you get from Doxpop?

Krista Lockyear: If we need additional records that we cannot get from Doxpop, we have to make a foyer request from the Clerk’s office and then if it’s not in person, they’ve got seven days to respond.

Councilmember Sutton: Yet, Doxpop is only going to cover like the most recent five years, so beyond that –

Councilmember Sutton: Yeah, and then not to mention that now you’ll actually have to pay for that which is kind of a hidden little tax that’s not been imposed upon taxpayers here with the Doxpop. But just a totally different angle of what has occurred in the past as far as records, accessing those, being able to get the information that you need in a timely fashion.

Councilmember Goebel: Doxpop will be operating on subscriber fees, is that correct?

Councilmember Sutton: Well, if you don’t subscribe, you don’t get the information, though.

Councilmember Raben: I might be the only one that, this may not come out right, but I think you need a little of both. I mean, I don’t think the Doxpop is such a bad thing. I think some user fee based services, you know, that can offer a little relief on the county is not so bad. I mean, you know, I know in my business, we pay tons and a stack of, just tons and tons of subscriptions fees for automotive repair stuff, you know, where you can, diagnostic stuff, you know, things of that nature that aren’t available to me through the county. And I, so I think we need to try to do both. You know, I think the county needs to meet the needs when they can of the business sector, and do everything possible for public sector, you know, for an individual that needs something. And I see Don back at the podium.

Don Fuchs: Mr. Raben, let me just address that, by Indiana statutory law, Mr. Ahlers can comment on this, the County Clerk is required to have a judgement index available to the public. So I understand saving the money on private services, but this is a statutory duty that the County Clerk is obligated to fulfill.

Don Fuchs: And so if another private company wants to supplement that, better service, more available, whatever it may be, that’s fine. But you cannot shed the County Clerk’s responsibility to have that information available, not just to people like us in business, just the general public.

Councilmember Raben: But my point is, maybe we’re not always going to have six computers available, maybe it’s two, maybe it’s three, but – I’m sorry?

Councilmember Raben: Okay, again, you know, you’re going to meet, I think Councilman Lloyd is going to meet with them and try to resolve something. We do have the law library that has a computer and it might be an option to move a couple of these into that area, so –

Don Fuchs: Mr. Raben, I sit on the law library foundation and we’ve got very limited space and we’re trying to do a lot there, so –

Councilmember Lloyd: I have another question. There is a position in the Clerk’s office, Administrative Librarian, I assume that’s the person that assists here. How long have we had those computers over there doing this? A long time? Ten years? Fifteen years? At least ten years?

Councilmember Lloyd: Just wondered how long we’ve had these open and available like that.

Councilmember Lloyd: ‘84? Well, and the other question I would have, if she was concerned about the well-being of the computers, you could just stick a camera in there and put a camera in the Clerks’ office and then not have a person. Just have someone to open and close it at night. So, I don’t know. I’m willing to work with her, I’m the liaison for her and we’ll see what we can come up with. But I think your concerns, if we can get something in writing, that would be helpful.

Darla Lindauer: My name is Darla Lindauer and I'm manager of the underwriting and search department at Evansville Titles. And, I guess, maybe Councilman Raben, I wanted to address one quick thing. We’re not here to criticize or argue and I think Krista said that and communicated that, and we would like to have some dialogue with Susie Kirk, the Clerk. One thing about Doxpop, I think it’s, I’m not in disagreement, it seems like it’s a great thing. The thing about Doxpop, and maybe you’re not the forum to talk to about it and Susie would be, is that it is limited, very limited in nature, probably the biggest user or the benefactor of that would be somebody coming in off the street and wanted to check the docket to see if they paid their parking deal or something like that, their ticket. Doxpop will only show docket sheets. It does not certify or does not allow us to access two very important things as title company searchers and that is gross income tax warrants and foreign or transcript docket records. It does not include that so that would be an additional step that we would have to do. And my understanding is, if we are limited to this access, even though we can go to Doxpop, we would have to then submit in writing two more important areas that we have to certify to in our searches, and that would be gross income tax warrants and foreign judgement dockets. So once again, that limits our ability to get out something in a timely and cost effective manner. In addition to that, if we do have to wait seven days for something or wait three days, it doesn’t really matter, that’s not the point. The point is, if we do have to wait, we cannot have our employees go and access that themselves and take a look at it, rule it out, or whatever. A lot of times what that leads into, if we look at something, we see, okay, we’ve waited three days, we’ve looked at something that we’ve ordered, we’ve got it back in three days instead of the seven. That leads us to something else that we have to look at and we have to access. Then we have to put in another written request. Okay, all of the sudden we’re down, instead of three days, we’re down to six days, we’re down to nine days or up to nine days, or whatever. So Doxpop, and we can talk, once again, have this dialogue with her, could be a help, but I don’t want everybody to think it’s a –

Councilmember Raben: And those are all great points and, you know, Doxpop is new to us. I think I got my first information on it Monday, something came through from the courts or something by email, that was the first I had heard of it. But those are all very good points and I think from the Council standpoint, you know, enough has been said today that everyone has got very similar interests that you have and Councilman Lloyd is going to work as their liaison to the courts to work through this.

President Shetler: I want to point out real quickly that according to the statute, that our responsibility here as a body is to fix the compensation of the employees and to fix the number of employees in a given office and to describe and classify the positions and the services. We did not de-fund that position. We did not de-fund that position. So I just want that real clear, kind of piggybacking on what Royce and I have said a few times before. So I’m not so sure that it can be done to eliminate that just arbitrarily without going to Job Study or without going back to this Council body and actually having that position eliminated and then rolled over. And I can assure you, it sounds as if you probably have maybe six or seven votes anyway, in that direction, quite a few anyway. So yes, Councilman Lloyd?

Councilmember Lloyd: The only thing I would add, the Sheriff is here, I had a question of him about the seven new positions.

President Shetler: Yeah, I’ll get on that here. So I hope that resolves the issues and, Krista, you and Russ and the Clerk will get together and get that done. And if Don wants to join, and if there’s any other Councilmembers that would like to, they’re welcome as well.

President Shetler: Okay, Sheriff, if you wouldn’t mind coming up real quickly. We did approve the seven replacements but there is a few questions that we had and we’d like –

Eric Williams: Sheriff Eric Williams. I apologize, we had a personnel issue at the office that I had to take care of.

President Shetler: You got a 7-0 vote and you weren’t here, I mean, that’s –

Councilmember Lloyd: I just wondered if the seven positions were all new entry level and they would be going into patrol or if you had other places where they would go.

Eric Williams: No, all seven positions will be brand new deputy sheriffs at the base level. Actually, they’ll be probationary deputies, so they’ll even be less than the base model, they’ll be $1,000 less the first year.

Councilmember Lloyd: They’ll eventually patrol or other possible duties once they take the complete probation?

Eric Williams: We’re constantly moving people around through the office to try to accomplish all of our services required. You know, right now I’m a few short in court security, I’m about four or five short in patrol. So they’ll spread out throughout the office.

Councilmember Lloyd: Okay, so you’ll – this has been approved so you would go through the process of selecting the best –

Eric Williams: Yeah, they’ll come off the merit list that’s approved by the merit board under the statute.

Eric Williams: We usually start the pool with about 50, that’s good for about two years, and when you look at our average hiring, this is a little higher than normal. We hire about seven a year, so that pool is good for two years, so usually we hire between ten and twenty out of that pool.

President Shetler: I had one other issue that we need to deal with. It is petition to increase the maximum levy and I’ll let Bill Fluty, our Auditor, explain that. I think you all have a copy of this in your packet. If we approve this, don’t run out, well, whether we approve it or don’t, I guess we probably need signatures here. So I need signatures on a form before you guys run out.

Bill Fluty: Yes, every year at this time in December, we ask for this to be approved by the Council. We’ll do this, it’s an estimate at 2.8 million. I think it will be less than that, I am sure of that, but you can’t increase it, and it will be reduced. I think last year it was 500,000. This is just a request, we’ll send it to the DLGF. It may or may not be approved by them.

President Shetler: It’s been moved and seconded, all in favor signify by saying aye.

(All Councilmembers voted affirmatively/Councilmember Bassemier left prior to vote)

President Shetler: So ordered. It’s six in favor and one – one missing. So 6-0.

President Shetler: Don’t forget to sign. The motion has been approved and we stand adjourned.

(There being no further business to come before the Council, the meeting was adjourned at 10:21 a.m.)

1030-4220	Office Machines	12,000.00	0.00
Total		12,000.00	0.00

From: 1030-3410	Printing	18,483.00	0.00
1030-1910	PERF	11.00	11.00
To: 1030-4220	Office Machines	18,483.00	0.00
1030-1270-1030	Tax/Sheriff Sale Coord.	11.00	11.00

FROM: 1070-2600	Office Supplies	800.00	800.00
1070-3130	Travel/Mileage	635.00	635.00
1070-3190	Solid Waste Disposal	600.00	600.00
1070-2230	Garage & Motor	700.00	700.00
1070-2600	Office Supplies	400.00	400.00
1070-2700	Other Supplies	400.00	400.00
1070-2710	Color Film	800.00	800.00
1070-2740	Chemicals	500.00	500.00
TO: 1070-4210	Office Furniture	800.00	800.00
1070-3310	Training	1,235.00	1,235.00
1070-3530	Contractual Services	2,800.00	2,800.00

FROM: 2030-4417	Baseline Rd. Bridge	450,000.00	450,000.00
2030-4424	Baehl Rd. Culvert	60,000.00	60,000.00
2030-4716	Mohr Rd. Bridge	40,000.00	40,000.00
2030-4719	Sensmeier Rd. Bridge	25,000.00	25,000.00
TO: 2030-4373	First Avenue Bridge	575,000.00	575,000.00

FROM: 1300-3000	Bond & Insurance	403.00	403.00
1300-3612	Legal Contractual	5,011.00	5,011.00
TO: 1300-1120-1300	County Attorney	3,193.00	3,193.00
1300-1900	FICA	245.00	245.00
1300-1910	PERF	248.00	248.00
1300-1920	Insurance	1,728.00	1,728.00