The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 3rd day of December in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 8:39 a.m. by Council President Marsha Abell.

President Abell: I’d like to call to order the December 3^rd, 2008 meeting of the Vanderburgh County Council. Attendance roll call please.

COUNCILMEMBER	PRESENT	ABSENT
Councilmember Sutton	X
Councilmember Leader		X
Councilmember Shetler	X
Councilmember Goebel	X
Councilmember Raben	X
Councilmember Winnecke		X
President Abell	X

President Abell: Before we have the Pledge of Allegiance, I’d like to tell everyone, I think Mr. Winnecke is in a Commissioner’s meeting in Indianapolis and that’s why he is not here. And Ms. Leader had surgery yesterday. We all – all of us on Council knew that she had been diagnosed with cancer, but she called me and she said both tumors were removed, everything appeared to be good. She was in great spirits and wanted to know what she was missing today. And I told her in the whole scheme of things, she wasn’t missing anything because her health is much more important and we wish her a speedy recovery, and I hope everyone will keep Donna in your prayers and in your thoughts that, as she goes through her chemo and the rest of her treatment, that everything will go well for her. And I would like to ask Mr. Sutton to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

President Abell: I’d entertain a motion for approval of the minutes of the meeting of November 5^th, 2008.

President Abell: We have an extremely long meeting today as evidenced by the many of you that are in our audience. I hope you’ll bear with us. We are going to try to muddle through two meetings at one time. We cancelled our last meeting, it was right before Thanksgiving, and we were not going to have a quorum, so if you’ll please be patient with us, I will turn the meeting over to Mr. Raben for the appropriation ordinance.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, I guess this is my first time having the meeting where we’ve combined Personnel & Finance with our final action meeting. And I might ask our legal counsel, before we begin discussion today, do we need to make a motion? I guess that would be following Roberts Rules if we –

Jeff Ahlers: In terms of what, because the meetings are being – no, not necessarily because the Personnel & Finance Committee meeting is not necessarily, I mean, this is just a meeting that has been properly noticed for you to take final action.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, but I meant before discussion, do we need to get a motion on the floor or do we just –

Jeff Ahlers: Oh, okay, I see what you’re saying. That’s fine. Yes, that would be appropriate to...

Councilmember Raben: Alright, first is the Treasurer, 1030-4220 and 1030-3530 in the amount of $5,954, I’ll move approval.

Councilmember Raben: Or does anybody have any questions or concerns in regards to these requests?

Z Tuley: I’m Z Tuley, the Vanderburgh County Treasurer. The whole event went real well. We were able to reduce comp time accumulation almost by 40% because we were able to get everyone through and we always wait on everybody that’s there at the time of closing and because we were able to get them through so quickly, we didn’t have to stay over as long on any given evening. So that went real well.

Councilmember Raben: That’s good news. Like many up here, I appreciate your efforts and Councilman Sutton’s efforts for making this happen. Hopefully, it’s something that I’m sure we’re going to need to continue to do in the future and I’m sure the taxpayers appreciate it, the one’s that typically have stood in line much longer than they did this go around.

Councilmember Sutton: Is there a dollar value that you probably would – I mean, with that comp time reduced, you would have –

Councilmember Sutton: Because, essentially, the program has more than paid for itself, but to put a dollar figure on that would be very helpful.

Councilmember Sutton: Yeah, if you could show us that, we could see where we stand overall.

Councilmember Sutton: And the numbers that came through the express pay station, can you –

Z Tuley: Were huge. They were up from – I think because of the advertising and so forth and, you know, prior to the deadline itself, people were able to vote and pay their taxes while they were here in the same building. That made it convenient.

Councilmember Raben: Okay next, Sheriff, 1050-1911 Sheriff Retirement in the amount of $105,000, I’ll move approval.

President Abell: Anyone have any questions for Mr. Williams, Sheriff Williams? Doesn’t appear so. Roll call vote.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, Voters Registration, 1220-2600 Office Supplies in the amount of $2,200; 1220-3410 Printing in the amount of 500, for a total of $2,700. I will move approval.

President Abell: Mr. Bushrod, would you like to come forward? I see Mr. Bushrod is here.

Tony Bushrod: What’s it’s needed for, we had an extended expense due to the big turnout –

Tony Bushrod: Testing? Had extended expenses due to the big turnout and people registering to vote. And we do our poll books in-house now. And then we have to send them out to have them drilled, which that increases the amount of cartridges that we need for printing and paper and things like that there.

President Abell: Anyone have any questions of Mr. Bushrod? Roll call vote please. I’m sorry, Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Did you have a little bit of an offset, then, since you’re doing it in-house as opposed to contracting it out?

Tony Bushrod: Well, before, it was done by Computer Services. Okay, you know, they used to print it out for us and we didn’t pay anything then. So what we requested is what we actually owe to different vendors.

Councilmember Goebel: Tony, in general, I know you probably didn’t have a lot to do with this, but stations away from the building here, early voter registration, do we have any kind of numbers as far as the percentage of people that voted in Vanderburgh County, that voted early?

Tony Bushrod: Those are available. Susie Kirk has made those available, I can get copies for you all and give them to you.

Councilmember Goebel: I was just curious because it seemed like a lot of people took advantage and in the afternoon of November 4, it was rather sparse.

Tony Bushrod: It was a real good turnout, but that’s under Susie Kirk’s office.

Councilmember Goebel: Okay, thank you. I didn’t know if you had those figures. Thanks.

Councilmember Sutton: Tony, I guess, based on what you’ve shared with us here, is this something we should – is this expense something we should anticipate with each election cycle or was this just a one-time only cost?

Tony Bushrod: Well, this is something that would happen each election cycle because, like I say, we do everything in-house. But, I mean, this was just overwhelming, this particular election cycle. And, of course, next year, unless it’s something, a referendum or something that comes up, --

Councilmember Raben: Okay next, Public Defender 1303-3948 Death Penalty in the amount of 20,000, I’ll move approval.

Councilmember Raben: The question I have is, how much more do we need to look at going forward with this case?

Steve Owens: We’re on the, thankfully, on the downside. There are $8,500 worth of bills currently pending that have not been approved by Judge Heldt at this point. That will get us through the briefing schedule. After that, I don’t know.

Councilmember Raben: Steve, what is our current cost, county cost to date on this case?

Steve Owens: You’ve appropriated, if my figures are correct as of today, not including the one pending, you’ve appropriated $466,000. You’ve received about $260,000 in reimbursement. They reimburse at 50%. The reason you’re a little higher than 50% is because we absorbed some of the early cost out of the Supplemental Public Defender account.

Councilmember Raben: As far as your office and the stress and the time factor that’s involved to you and your staff, what percentage over the last 18 months has this consumed in your office?

Steve Owens: Well, most of that has actually been my time working the calculations, doing reimbursement requests, that sort of thing. As you know, the rule provides that the two attorneys are appointed by the judge, they basically report to him. Basically, all we’ve done is seek the appropriations, seek the reimbursement. Because those two attorneys were placed on administrative leave, we had to do a little shifting in terms of our other caseloads, but that was not anything terribly out of the ordinary.

Councilmember Goebel: Excluding this particular case, do you have any idea of how much money has been reimbursed to your office from the state, to date, or –

Councilmember Raben: Next, Superior Court, and there is three requests for a total appropriation request in the amount of $292,488, I’ll move approval.

President Abell: Judge Niemeier, did you...I think Mr. Heston is going to talk about the Youth Care Center, but you should – would you like to come up? They may have some questions about the Patient/Inmate Care. Thank you.

President Abell: Does anyone have a question regarding the Patient and Inmate Care?

Councilmember Raben: (Inaudible – microphone not turned on) – in 2006 in this line, we spent approximately a little over $2,000,000. In ‘07, we were knocking on 1.7 million dollar’s door. And this year, it’s going to be about 1.6. And I’m concerned, you know, we’ve got an appropriation request here today for the Youth Care Center, and I hope we’re using every opportunity we can to utilize that facility that we’re also paying a lot of money for. But I would really look to have seen this cost get down far below where it’s at today. And I was just hoping maybe you could speak to that. I’m sure there’s good reasoning, but you need to make me feel more comfortable about why we look at this account every year and why it seems to stay so large.

Brett Niemeier: You know, it’s always a tough issue, not only the Patient/Inmate line item, but the other line items where you’re dealing with kids. And I do my best, quite frankly, not to be looking at my budget thinking, okay, I need to cut because I don’t want to send this kid to treatment and what he needs. So we do have ebbs and flows, there’s no doubt about it. I anticipated, quite frankly, that our cost would go down. I had promised you and myself that once we had the Youth Care Center expanded, that we could take at least a few kids, you know, maybe ten – fifteen kids from the Department of Corrections and bring them back locally. Quite frankly, that hasn’t worked out very well. One, whenever those kids were sent to the Department of Corrections, it proved out that that was a good decision. They just weren’t appropriate to be here locally. And, because of other circumstances, you know, what’s going on locally in the community, crime is up, which means that those beds aren’t available now. You know, thank goodness, we haven’t been overcrowded at the Youth Care Center, but we don’t have much room to spare. So I just don’t have the ability to bring those kids back and save us costs on the Patient/Inmate line item and put that cost to the Youth Care Center.

Councilmember Raben: And again, I don’t, this is one business I don’t understand or don’t claim to have any knowledge in, but when you send a juvenile off to a state institution, as an example, is there any risk that maybe they come back more aggressive or, you know, from being in that type of environment, I mean, would they stand a better chance of rehabilitating had they gone to the local facility first and then find out that maybe they need to go to the state, to a higher secured facility?

Brett Niemeier: Absolutely. My practice is called graduated sanctions, so I don’t think there’s probably ever been a child where – unless he committed a horribly serious offense, you know, an attempted murder, an armed robbery, something like that, we use graduated sanctions, which means that we try everything possible here locally first. We try probation, we try house arrest, then we try short-term detention, and then we try a longer-term detention, ultimately, we end up trying a treatment facility. Whenever that doesn’t work, typically, the Department of Correction is the last resort. And those kids that are up there have had every opportunity in the world to correct their issues here locally through outpatient and then also in-patient services, and they just have not responded. And the reason why we do that is that typically kids that go to the Department of Correction, once they come out, you’ve got a bigger problem on your hands, so that’s why we just absolutely use that as a last resort.

Councilmember Goebel: Judge Niemeier, do you know a head count, how many Vanderburgh County has outsourced to the state?

President Abell: Judge Niemeier, are you aware of any possible, I’m not aware of any, so I’m asking you the question, any possible pending legislation that the state is going to give us any financial relief on this?

Brett Niemeier: Well, as you know, in this latest budget cycle, the Department of Corrections, starting January 1^st will be paid for by the state. So instead of the $60 per day per diem, we now will be at zero cost to the Department of Corrections, so that will be a huge benefit to us. But I don’t want to change my philosophy just because now we have a free facility up in Indianapolis.

Brett Niemeier: I still think we need to do the same as we’ve been doing, the graduated sanctions and those kids that go to the Department of Corrections, that should be the last resort even though it is free.

President Abell: I wanted to clarify that. I thought was the case in the new bill, but I wanted to make sure that it was.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, and there’s also the request for the YCC operations which I had mentioned that’s in the same motion if anyone has a question.

Brett Niemeier: And I’ll be glad to speak to that, also, if you want, if you have any questions. I’ve reviewed their paperwork. It’s kind of unique because there was really no vehicle to get this before the Council except for going through my office, so I went ahead and asked for you to consider it. You know, after looking at it, it’s such a small amount of money, if this is coming out of January of next year’s budget, if you want to do it that way, I would suggest just appropriating it from the Patient/Inmate Care line item, which should have more than enough money now because of the reduced cost from DOC.

Councilmember Raben: But, which does drive another question as far as the request for the Patient/Inmate side today, this pays bills through November?

Brett Niemeier: That I’m not positive. I didn’t prepare that. My Chief Probation Officer prepared it. The DOC cost, they bill quarterly, we’ll have another bill come in probably February, early March, which will be our last DOC bill, and that’s going to be, you know, a quarter million dollars or so.

President Abell: Mr. Goebel, did you have a question? You’re looking like you did.

Councilmember Goebel: No, I think there is some bills coming in for November yet, I think, according to this request.

President Abell: We can always repeal the money, you know, but we have to go ahead with the appropriation today. You can’t make a transfer. I think that’s correct, isn’t it Mr. Fluty? Okay. Are there any questions anyone has? And Mr. Heston is here representing the board at the Youth Care Center if any of you have any questions of him.

Councilmember Sutton: I had a question back on the Patient/Inmate line. Now all of this is Indiana based care that’s being provided there? Is any of this for out of state or anything like that?

Councilmember Shetler: I don’t have any questions specifically, just a request that if we could amend the motion to remove the item for the moving expense because I have a potential conflict of interest there from that motion, and then we can vote on that separately where I could abstain then.

President Abell: I think Mr. Heston has something he wants to say. He motioned to me. You can come ahead, Mr. Heston.

Phillip Heston: Obviously, I appreciate this moving so fast, but one thing I’d like to do, and one thing we are pleased with at the Youth Care Center and you will be pleased, that DOC inspected the Youth Care Center a week or ten days ago, and gave us a hundred percent rating. So we can congratulate Brian Cook, who runs the Youth Care Center, is with us today. There hasn’t been any question about this bill, as Judge Niemeier alluded to. On page 12 of the contract that you have there, our attorney, Steve Krohn is here, and your attorney, a number of months ago, Ziemer, they worked this out. We had a three percent increase standard on our billing for a five year contract. That’s worked very well, but we added and this is included, any bills that came in above the three percent increase with costs of living, we could pass it on monthly. Nobody has questioned that. What has been questioned is who we bill and who pays it. One of our men, Norm Snyder, Chairman of our Board, has talked to everybody and worked with Judge Niemeier, who has been very gracious on this thing. So if you would, this will be coming up, it’s a monthly bill that we pass on an increase above our three percent. You should have, and we didn’t have a vehicle in here where your controller made sure that what we were passing on was absolutely correct. We have a very, very good accountant and it will be correct. But then, who do we bill monthly? This will come up again this next April as far as a new contract. Three percent increase and you’ve got the same kind of expenses with your facility as far as adults, they’re staying in detention, some things go up more. We just had a renewal come up on our health insurance at the Youth Care Center. It was going to go up ten percent. We think this amounts to heavy dole, that would have been seven percent more than the three percent cost of living increase. We worked on that and we put in larger deductibles and held that about the same, otherwise, you’d have seen a big increase that you wouldn’t have liked this next April. But anyway, if you would in approving this, which we appreciate, get a vehicle in the minutes as to who should check this out to make sure that we’re honestly sending things over correctly each year and the vehicle where it goes to be paid on a monthly basis, because we’re supporting this by contributions, not to the Youth Care Center, but contributions to take care of the poor and transients, and so on. So thank you for your help, but make it efficient as far as next year is concerned. Thank you.

President Abell: Thank you, Mr. Heston. I think that will probably be written into your contract negotiations as to where you send that, but just on the blush of it, I would think that they would go to the County Commissioners because they are the ones that sign contracts, and they would be the ones who will be in charge of making sure this gets on the agenda. Mr. Niemeier, really, is way too busy to be looking at this and it needs to be looked at by the County Commissioners. They have a staff that can do this.

Phillip Heston: And should that we done a couple of months before this comes up for annual renewal next April 1^st?

President Abell: Well, I would say you probably need to contact the County Commissioners and ask how they want to handle that. Mr. Raben, did you have something you wanted to ask?

Councilmember Raben: I guess my only question here is, I mean, we have to see that the expenses are going to continue to go up three percent. I mean, some of this may stabilize and even go back the other way. So it seems like we’re kind of putting the cart before the horse here.

Phillip Heston: Well, we would have to, through Judge Niemeier and whoever the County Commissioners have to check us out, justify the expenses. But a lot of expenses at your jail facility here in Evansville, you’ve got a perfect example, same thing is happening there is happening at the Youth Care Center. Some things are going up more than three percent.

Councilmember Raben: It’s happening everywhere, quite frankly. And in our households, but, you know, again, --

President Abell: But this 18,000 is in arrears, isn’t it? This isn’t the future.

Councilmember Raben: Food and things of that nature, you know, might stabilize and go back down at some point.

Phil Heston: And we don’t have food in this bill here. Mainly, you’re talking about insurance, utilities, our CPA controller, is with us to ask any specific questions on it, but utilities, and insurance and some other items are jumping. The payroll is limited to a three percent increase, and some of that has gone up more, but that’s a decision that we have control over. We’re not passing anything like that on to you. It’s just what we don’t have control over.

Councilmember Raben: Right, because salaries and whatnot, should be part of the big number that –

Councilmember Raben: – the annual increase. But food is one of the explanations in here and part of the rationale and some of the invoices.

Phil Heston: That’s exactly right, and it has been jumping. And it might go back down this next year. I hope so. I bet it doesn’t, but it might.

Councilmember Raben: I don’t know that we totally answered his question yet. I mean, are you wanting to be paid every six months, is that what the –

Phil Heston: We were told that we could submit monthly bills along with our regular bill. Now if that’s not appropriate, but we don’t want to have to come before a body after it’s approved for this next year.

Councilmember Raben: Well, we would probably rather you come back once or twice a year. Let’s – I mean, rather than come in here monthly asking for an additional appropriation for this part of the contract, let’s maybe June 1^st look at it and we’ll see where you’re at and make that adjustment and then, you know, again this time next year.

Phil Heston: Obviously, Mr. Raben, I don’t know how this works, but if this could be out of a fund of Judge Niemeier’s or somebody else’s, it seems like it would be approved for a year and flow once a year. Now we would be glad to come back every six months, but we would be billing for six months ahead, because this is off of the expenses that we had the year before, and rather than – I guess we’d have to work out the mechanics of it, but it seems like it would be out of the facilities and so on because this is – I’m not qualified on this, but this is a contractual arrangement on a monthly basis for this billing. We’re not asking for anything special.

Councilmember Raben: We can look at that. In fact, Judge, maybe you and I can come back to this in the next 30 days or something. We can possibly look at a line within the Commissioner’s budget or something that we can fund after the first of the year. But, again, the judge and I will circle the wagons and –

Phil Heston: The judge has been wonderful and he’s very familiar and he’s – if you can work with him so that we could bill somebody every month or six months ahead and so on. But it is a contractual arrangement.

President Abell: We can’t pay bills ahead. I don’t think we’re allowed to do that. I mean, we’re not allowed to do that.

Councilmember Raben: You can do as, maybe fund a line within the Commissioner’s budget and let them pay these bills or claims out of it, --

President Abell: But bills have to be incurred for us to pay them. Any other questions? Mr. Shetler?

Councilmember Shetler: Have you had a chance to look at this, Mr. Ahlers, the contract, at all?

Councilmember Shetler: The three percent, is it based on the increased rates or the overall usage?

Councilmember Shetler: For example, two areas that I can think of, let’s just say that you are at 50% occupancy and the amount of food purchased has actually gone down because you don’t have as many people, but the cost of living or the cost increase in food from the supplier has gone up 6%. Okay? Which would – are we going off that rate and something – I guess this is where I’m really coming from is the utilities. If the utilities usage has gone up because you’re going through a hot spell or a cold spell or you’ve got more demand for it, certain sections are turned on or off, versus the actual rate increase from Vectren, and that’s, kind of trying to determine that.

Jeff Ahlers: Well, I think it’s from the budgeted amount as in 8.1, so it would have to exceed that by more than 3 percent.

Jeff Ahlers: Yeah, I mean, in other words, I would assume that if their costs are less because they have less people there, then there would be no need to get an increase, to your point, right?

Jeff Ahlers: It’s only if it exceeds the amount that was budgeted by more than the 3 percent, would there be the ability to have a claim. And I don’t read anywhere in there, Mr. Heston mentioned monthly, there’s nothing in there that says it needs to be done monthly, so, I mean, that’s your prerogative, how you want to go about it. And still, to a certain extent, you know, discretionary, you know, from Council’s standpoint, you know, as to what you want to do on that. You still have the ability to control and budget for expenses. I mean, it’s not a blank check, so that’s still within your prerogative how you want to do that.

Phil Heston: Mr. Shetler asked a very astute question. I mean, depending on how many boys or girls we feed over there, that is adjusted a little bit, but for all practical purposes, 98 percent of all our expenses are just the way they are. I mean, our payroll isn’t more or less. The number of employees, the insurance, the cost of operating the building, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, the insurance, and so on. Food is depending on how much you feed, but all the rest of it is basically the same.

President Abell: Well, I think we’ll leave the logistics of this thing up to the contract time with the County Commissioners and how they can work this out. I think today we’re just interested in working with the $16,488 request. So does anyone else have a question about that particular court request? Okay, thank you, Mr. Heston. Do you want to amend your motion?

Councilmember Raben: I will. Madam President, I’d like to amend my motion to include only account 1370-3050 Patient/Inmate in the amount of $275,000, and 1370-3052 YCC Operating Cost in the amount of $16,488, for a total of $291,488.

President Abell: Mr. Sutton, you had seconded that. Do you want to amend your second?

Terry Dietsch: My question goes to the part of Mr. Raben’s motion regarding the requested appropriation for $1,000 for moving. I don’t know why we were asked to submit this request to begin with, but if I understand you correctly, Mr. Raben, you are not including that in your motion.

Councilmember Raben: And I was going to make a motion after this vote for just that line.

Terry Dietsch: To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time this has ever occurred, I could be wrong. I attempted to call Mr. Rector yesterday, and unfortunately, we missed one another. To the best of my knowledge, in all the time that we’ve been around here, if there was a move from one office to another, I don’t ever recall anyone requesting money from the County Council to affect that move. Am I correct or incorrect?

President Abell: The only information I have – Ms. Deig told me that Bennie is not able to help with that, is that correct, Sarah?

President Abell: Yeah, and there is a conflict with the work release people because of court records and –

Councilmember Shetler: I don’t think that’s what your question is, because there were a couple vendors, movers, that come in from time to time and do work in the building and for the court system. I think your question is, why is it coming through the County Council as opposed to coming through the Building Authority –

Councilmember Shetler: Right, and that I can’t answer. It has happened on a couple occasions I can think of in a couple township assessor type of situations, it did come up, but they were relatively small amounts like this is. Other than that, usually bigger projects do come through the Building Authority and I don’t know. I can’t...

Terry Dietsch: Okay, well, at any rate, it’s a moot question now. Alright, thank you.

President Abell: Okay, well, any other questions? We are voting on the two expenses minus the moving expense. Roll call vote please.

Councilmember Raben: Okay next 1370-3605 Moving Expense in the amount of $1,000, I’ll move approval.

Councilmember Goebel: I think that does merit a little bit of consideration as to why it came to us in this form and it didn’t go through the Building Authority because I don’t remember this ever happening before at any time.

President Abell: Well, I don’t either and I used to be the Clerk here and I did a lot of moving around there and I never asked the Council to pay for any moving expense.

President Abell: I told you all I know is that Judge Lloyd was concerned about work release people handling the court files and then Bennie, I guess, couldn’t do it.

Councilmember Goebel: I think we want to have it done, I just don’t know if this is the right way to go about it.

Bill Fluty: I just know in the past, Bennie has done most of the moving with some help and its usually been with people from the Community Corrections. Apparently, this can’t happen this time. I don’t remember the Building Authority actually moving, they do all the maintenance, but I don’t know when they participated in actually moving furniture from one office to another office. That’s always been something Bennie has done. So I guess that’s the real change here.

President Abell: Judge Niemeier, who moved you, because you moved from one building to another.

President Abell: It’s from one floor to the other. She is moving from the second floor down to the judicial corridor.

Councilmember Sutton: Outside of someone retiring, was there any reason given why a move needed to be made?

President Abell: Well, I guess there’s some pecking order as to who gets to move down to the judicial corridor and she has seniority, if that answers your question. So the new kid on the block gets her office and she gets to move downstairs to the judicial corridor. Fair answer, Judge Dietsch? Okay.

President Abell: They’re shaking their heads – no one wants to broach the subject. I just happen to be brazen enough to do it. That’s it.

President Abell: Do you want to remove – you know, we have another meeting we could always –

Councilmember Raben: Bennie is, I mean, he’s in the building today. I saw him. I don’t think that Bennie, on his own, is physically able to – I don’t know that any of us in this room on our own are able to make this big of a move. And again, it’s a matter of security if you have work release people in there moving court records. I mean, you know, common sense tells us that that’s probably not the best situation, so...

Councilmember Sutton: And who was going to do this move? It doesn’t say in here.

Councilmember Raben: Well, I think you heard it earlier. The person awarded the contract is to your left.

Councilmember Shetler: Well no, not exactly. They use a couple different vendors and he usually gets quotes on those moves and I don’t think anything has been awarded on this specifically yet. Because there’s a possibility, I think it’s better for me not to be involved in that. There have been numerous moves over the course of the last 40 years that have taken place in this building by professionals. It particularly, when it gets into the court system, it becomes a bit more sensitive. I don’t think it’s the amount of money here, I think the question is, why is it being handled in this method? And I can’t answer that question because it is unique. I’ve not seen it before that I’ve been on the Council and I don’t know how it was handled before except that I know that I eventually got a check and I was happy about that.

Councilmember Goebel: Do we have a meeting? Or we couldn’t approve it, though, next week.

Councilmember Shetler: Well, Mr. Rector may be in the building and maybe he could give the explanation. If we put this off toward the end, somebody could track him down, because that’s really, I think that’s where that request would come from anyway.

Councilmember Raben: If we can get him up here before the end of the meeting, let’s do that.

Councilmember Raben: Okay next, County Council, Accrued Payments, Office Machines and FICA in the amount of $113,902, I’ll move approval.

Councilmember Raben: Okay next, Sheriff Misdemeanor Housing, Insurance in the amount of $5,000, I’ll move approval.

President Abell: Questions? Sheriff Williams is here. I don’t have a question about this, Sheriff Williams, but I did see you on television last night and I wanted to ask you how the charge for the sex offenders is going.

Eric Williams: I was hoping I’d get to tell you that. Actually, it’s gone very well –

Eric Williams: – much as I predicted and what I pledged to you. I know Kim is preparing a quietus to quietus about 13,000 back to the General Fund to cover the cost that you gave us to pay for the extra part-timer to cover that. So that part paid for itself. So far, I think it’s a good program. It is generating funds. I think it’s going to end up being about $18,000 for the year.

Eric Williams: Fifty dollars for an annual registration and five dollars any time they have to amend their information.

Eric Williams: You know, much as I said last night to the news, I think this is the perfect example of a peer user fee. These are the individuals that created the situation and they’re the ones that have to be on the registry and they ought to at least foot the biggest portion of the bill. While that’s not really occurring, they are making a dent in it.

Eric Williams: My actual request, though, just so you know, that is for insurance and it’s from unappropriated grant money, that’s just to cover insurance for employees that are paid from that grant.

President Abell: Any other questions? Thank you, Sheriff, and thanks for doing a good job.

Councilmember Raben: Okay next, Jail Project 3660-4196 repeal in the amount of $635,000, I’ll move approval.

President Abell: Questions? Is that the correct amount? Okay. Roll call vote please.

Councilmember Sutton: Madam President, before we move on to the transfers, could you indulge me for a second? On one of our previous ones that we went through, on the County Council, on the Accrued Payments, do we have something that lists – Sandie is not in the room – do we have something that lists those accrued payments out on an itemized basis, who they’re going to and the amounts? I mean, because we’ve got 105,000 on that line. Do we have something that shows that?

Bill Fluty: I know Sandie does. We have projected, we don’t know exactly all the moves that are going to happen, but we do have some information on quite a few of them, and the ones that have already been turned in to us. So that is an estimate.

Councilmember Sutton: So that is an estimate. So if we can get that itemized for us, before those payments are actually made, that would be extremely helpful for us to see that. I know we do at the end of the year always get some changes in staffing with people retiring and so forth, but if we could see that, that would be great.

President Abell: Thank you. Mr. Goebel, did you have a question? Okay. Transfer requests?

Councilmember Raben: Alright, Madam President, if everyone wants to take a moment and revisit the transfers, there’s several of them including the late transfer

request for the Election Office, the Cum Bridge and the Knight/Reassessment. If no one has any questions with any of those transfers, I would like to make one motion to include all transfers and approve as listed.

Councilmember Sutton: It’s on the Coroner, back during budget time, we had a presentation that talked about the extensive number of issues and repairs related to that building and trying to get an idea if we’re any closer to coming up with a list of what those projects are. In this here, there’s a request for replacing out the carpet and they were talking about the air conditioning unit, and the cooling unit was bad. Is there any progress being made toward that before we start buying carpet?

Annie Groves: Hi, I’m Annie Groves, Chief Deputy Coroner. The air conditioning is not going bad. It did need a few repairs and it’s going to need some more. Our refrigeration is going to need some more. But we aren’t in to where we have to replace everything. It’s, you know, we have to add stuff every once in a while. The Freon goes out and we have to give it a little boost there, but the building is, you know 17 years old. We will need a roof. There are things that we will need. However, we’re to the point now that we do have the money for the carpet, if we can transfer. We can no longer clean our carpets, they’re that bad. In fact, when it rains now, the carpets bubble up. So it, you know, it’s something that it’s a band-aid approach but we’re going to have to start slow there. There’s a lot that needs to be done.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, during budget time, I know I did make a request and there was a lot of discussion about just the condition of the building and recognizing the condition of it and the age of it. What we were anticipating was something that, someone who would go over from the Building Authority in coordination with the Coroner’s office and giving us an assessment of what those needs are in that office so that --

– might get to the point where their repairs might be larger than what they may need to be right now or any issues that may cause a compromise in the level of service that you guys can provide because of just structural issues. I haven’t seen that yet. I mean, is that something that’s being developed?

Annie Groves: Well, the Building Authority does not own the building, the Commissioners do.

Councilmember Sutton: I understand that, but in relation to what they do with some of our other buildings and really gaining some assessment of what repair needs, that’s what we were hoping there would be some coordination there. They wouldn’t be responsible for it. Ultimately, it would come back on the Council in making those repairs. Is there something that is being worked toward so that we can get a true assessment of what those needs are? Because we have had some requests related to the building.

Annie Groves: I would be more than happy to take care of that and bring that to you because I know it needs to be done. There’s a lot of things that does need to be done. And I could go ahead and get prices, etcetera, on the repairs that we do need, if you would like that.

Councilmember Sutton: I guess what brought it to bear and like I said, just seeing that we’re dealing with a carpet issue and knowing the refrigeration issue is just – I want to make sure we’re in line with what priorities are highest.

Councilmember Goebel: Annie, hi. Did I hear you correctly, the old carpet bubbles up when it rains?

Annie Groves: No, it will not. What it is, is it’s the glue is coming up from the floor because of the age, so what happens is, when we have some rain, the moisture makes the carpet bubble.

Councilmember Raben: Just a comment. I think that building is actually older than 17 years.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. But I think everybody up here, Annie, agrees that it’s time to probably give that thing a little care to preserve it.

President Abell: Any other questions? Roll call vote. Wait a minute. We’re on all the transfers. And this is on all the transfers, we’re voting on all the transfers, not just the Coroners. Although she is the one that got picked on. Roll call vote please.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, and I see Sarah is not back yet, so I guess we’ll delay the $1,000 until later on in the meeting.

President Abell: We’ll continue with the meeting and when Sarah gets back and we hear from Mr. Rector, we’ll go forward.

President Abell: Under old business, there is a new board that has been, is in the process of being formulated, it is the Disability Advisory Board, and we have an appointment and I asked all of you last week if anyone thought Michelle Kirk would be a suitable candidate for that. And as I recall, the Sheriff was in the back of the room at that time, shaking his head yes. We do have her papers prepared, I understand. And Ms. Kirk is here and if you’d like to come forward, Ms. Kirk, maybe we can introduce you to the Council, and you can tell us a little bit about your background and why this is a good appointment for you.

Michelle Kirk: Hello, I am Michelle Kirk. I am currently the director of Sycamore Services and we serve the deaf and hard of hearing population as well as adult and children with developmental disabilities, and I have been in this field for about 22 years and started actually working in the Special Olympics and continued from there. I have extensive experience in the field. I am really excited about the appointment and really look forward to serving.

President Abell: We’re very happy to have someone so well qualified as our appointment on the board.

President Abell: Thank you so much and if you can see – we have your papers here. You’ll need to go to the Clerk’s Office to be sworn in. If you can stick around for just a few minutes, we can take care of that.

Councilmember Raben: Madam President, we can go ahead and take care of the amendments to the Salary Ordinance –

President Abell: Are we going to take the Township Assessors later? How do you want to handle that?

Councilmember Raben: I don’t know, has Sarah passed around, did she pass around before she left...let me look on her desk and make sure everybody... Okay, sorry about that. As you can see, we’ve got quite a few amendments to the Salary Ordinance and, Madam President, I would like, rather than call these or read all these out, ask that they be entered into the minutes, be made part of the minutes. If anyone has any questions on the Assessors portion of it, which is about 80% of what we’re dealing with here, I’ll be happy to answer any of those. I might speak to it just briefly and call on our legal counsel if I don’t explain this well enough, but as everyone recalls, last August when we prepared our budget, we appropriated for the Assessors, six months of their salaries in these three individual township budgets and then we funded a lump sum line within the County Assessor’s budget. You know, at that time, none of us knew what was going to happen in regards to the referendum, and as it turned out, the action we took was the appropriate action. But, all these accounts, basically, are shifting those lines from their general budgets into the County Assessor’s budget. The three at the bottom are for the actual elected township assessors, for Center, Knight and Pigeon. And what the law states is that, while these individuals will still be considered elected officials, we have to fund their level two certifications and whatever we opt to do on the benefit side. But it’s my understanding that some or all of these individuals have applied with the Assessor’s Office for other responsibilities within his budget or within his office. But they’ll no longer be paid out of their original line items. And, again, according to law, it states that we cannot adjust an elected official’s salary in the same budget year, so we can’t go in and reset those line items after January 1. We have to do it this year and then the ones who might take work at the County Assessor’s Office will have lines that you see above and we’ll make those appropriate adjustments after January 1. So I know I probably didn’t do a great job explaining that, it’s a lot to explain, but if there’s any questions, please ask now and I can even turn to our legal advisor.

Councilmember Shetler: The pay level then, for the Assessors if they decided not to take on a job underneath the new arrangement underneath the Assessor would be one dollar for the entire year?

Councilmember Raben: Could be up to that one dollar. No, by law, all we’re required to pay them is actually their level two certification, which is $1,000, which is a line that’s already funded.

Councilmember Shetler: Well, are we treating this differently than what we did back in June and July on the other townships? Because at that time, what we did is, we paid, I think, the balance for the six months when those guys left that office, they were still paid for – and what we did is, we agreed upon, I think according to the Assessor’s advice at that meeting back in June, that we pay them for six months even if they weren’t going to go on. And now we’re kind of dropping them, and German Township, I’m thinking of specifically, so are we treating this differently?

Councilmember Raben: Again, you couldn’t adjust their salaries in the same budget year.

Councilmember Raben: So this is totally different. I mean, to make the adjustment we need to make, we have to do it this year for 2009. We have to do it in December of 2008.

Councilmember Shetler: I understand that. My point being, though, that what we did has established the fact that, and particularly in German Township, I think they were kind of given a choice, and in German Township, he decided not to, and then he continued on to be paid and that was just kind of the way we set that up.

Councilmember Raben: Well, but you’ve got the other lines established. It’s just, there will not be a need for an actual Center, Knight, Pigeon Township Assessor line item. Okay, --

Councilmember Raben: So we can shift, we can transfer funds, you know, if any or all three, we can transfer funds into other line items. You just, if it pertains to them as an elected official, we can’t take any action after today. They all three can go to work in the County Assessor’s Office where funds will be made available, we’ll transfer funds to fund those positions.

Councilmember Sutton: And I think the – kind of along the lines of what I was going to – really similar to what Tom has alluded to, the question is, if a person in any of these three Assessor Offices chooses, say that the elected assessor chooses not to go over to the County Assessor’s Office, do they still have the ability to be paid for duties under their old office or I guess their office that no longer exists, similar to the issue that we had with the German Assessor. So if they choose not to go over, would they still receive compensation with no adjustment whatsoever to their salary, but they would receive the same salary they ordinarily would?

Councilmember Sutton: Didn’t the Department of Local Government Finance act on this? I thought we received a memo on this issue.

President Abell: They’ve changed, they’ve flip flopped. We’ve received a lot of memos, they keep changing their –

Jeff Ahlers: And I think Mr. Raben did a good job of explaining it, but, I mean, essentially, what we’ve got here is because of a technicality in the law that says that an elected officeholder’s salary can’t be changed in the year that it’s fixed. Our problem is, is that within the salary line item for them as an elected officeholder, we have to set that, whatever you want that to be set, by the end of the year because come January 1, ‘09, whatever it is, it is. The law says you cannot increase or decrease an elected official’s salary line item in the year for which it is fixed. Now, in ‘09, you can change it for ‘10, but you can’t change it for ‘09. So the thought is, that – and then the Attorney General, because of all that’s occurred with the Township Assessors, has issued an Attorney General opinion saying that it will not be considered to be a violation of the dual officeholder law if they also become a deputy assessor under the County Assessor. So they’re able to continue through the rest of their term as being an elected official, they can also be employed as a deputy by the County Assessor and be paid for that. That line item as a deputy, of course, would be treated like any other employee, and you can increase or decrease that salary next year as you need to, to compensate. It’s just that the salaried line item for them as an elected officeholder, you’re going to have to make, if not at this meeting, at a special meeting before the end of the year, what you’re going to set that in as and that can be anywhere from zero to the full salary.

Jeff Ahlers: Well, one dollar, whatever you want to do. You can zero it, they continue to be an elected officeholder. The question is whether you want to pay them for being an elected officeholder if they’re not performing any other duties and that’s up to you. I mean, you can pay them their full salary if you like, it’s just that after January 1, you can’t change that line item.

Councilmember Sutton: Perhaps this is all just idle discussion if all of these individuals are planning to go over to the County Assessor’s Office anyway. Do we know that to be the case?

Jeff Ahlers: And I think that’s part of the conundrum that you’re facing is that if those decisions had been made, it would be easier for you to adjust these salaries to make them as you deem to be appropriate and just. The problem is, is I guess there are some question marks there as to whether any or all of these folks will be hired and in what positions in the County Assessor’s Office, and to what they would be paid through the virtue of that position, so you still have the problem as to what you want to do with the elected officeholder. And as Mr. Shetler raises, I guess you do have an issue if you choose to address, I suppose, is that if any of them are not employed in the Assessor’s Office or that you believe that they have duties as an elected officeholder independent of those duties, to continue to help in the transition. And obviously, I don’t know what duties those would be and the County Assessor or whoever, may be better to address that, maybe there is a basis that you want to pay them independently. That’s your choice. It’s just that in that particular line item, you’re going to be faced with having to live with that decision for the entire year of 2009, whatever you set that in before the end of the year.

Councilmember Raben: Could I, real quick, step in just a moment? Prior to the meeting, because, and Sarah was away from the room when we got into the amendments here, but first, Sarah, did you look, were you able to find out if this room was available on the 17^th? Okay, our regular Personnel & Finance meeting is scheduled for next Wednesday, the 10^th, and Sandie Deig was concerned that there is going to be other housekeeping matters in regards to the County Assessor’s Office that we’ll have to address yet this year. Sarah was going to check and see if we can push our Personnel & Finance meeting back another week to the 17^th, if that’s okay with everybody, and that would give us ample time if we need to advertise to make any other changes in regards to that office. We could advertise our Personnel & Finance meeting and go ahead and have ample time to advertise a special meeting where might be taking final action on some matters just like housekeeping here within the County Assessor’s Office. So if you’d rather not even get into this today, we don’t have to. But everyone has to understand that we’ll have to have a special meeting because we will have to set these other lines in before the end of the year. So –

Councilmember Sutton: Because I’m not going to be available on the 10^th, anyway.

Councilmember Sutton: Right, so that would work and then just given the number of questions that we’ve got and all the different opinions from the Department –

Councilmember Raben: I’m fine with that. It was like, if everybody wasn’t okay with the special meeting, then we had to take action today. So –

President Abell: Maybe we need to check with the County Assessor and he could be here to also –

Councilmember Shetler: By law, I think he’s got until the 31^st to actually make that decision and it’s not, I guess some of the problem here that I see a couple problems that, you know, I’d just as soon put it off until the 17^th as well, and perhaps I should wait on that, but the one problem is, is that we’re doing with, first of all, they have to apply by today, I think, is what his rule has been. And then the second is, he has to hire them, which could be a question. And then the third point is, that we did treat, and I understand that they were underneath the ‘08 law, which had to be acted on in `07, but nobody knew about it in ‘07 because it didn’t become law until late April of ‘08. So we had people who are officeholders who ran for – and the opinion I think at the time, the County Assessor, when he came here in June, and this body, when we acted on it, was to basically extend to those folks who were elected, a six month type of severance if you will. And I guess we’d call it otherwise, and that’s the only point that I was bringing up is that I thought that that was kind of what we had as an unspoken agreement back in June.

Councilmember Raben: And again, we can make any of those adjustments. As you look through here, there’s three new lines for First Deputy/Real Estate. That would be for those individuals if needed to be. But let’s do this, I’m going to amend my motion barring that Sarah doesn’t run into anything in regards to reserving this room for the 17^th, and I guess we’ll have the time of that hopefully before we adjourn today.

Councilmember Raben: I’m going to amend my motion for the amendments to salary ordinance to only include County Council salary line 1480-1971 Accrued Payments as previously adopted, the appropriation request for buy-outs for retirees and employees no longer Chief Deputies; Health Department salary line 2130-1990 Extra Help as previously approved; Election Office 1210-1120 Election Assistant as previously approved; and Cum Bridge salary line 2030-1970 Temporary Replace-ment as previously approved. I make that in the form of a motion.

President Abell: Okay, I’m going to move A & B under new business to the end of the meeting, so we can get these other, because they’re going to take longer, and get these other – actually, I’m going to leave B on. Is Libbie here? Libbie, do you want to come forward and talk about the tax phase-in compliance and –

Libbie Au: Certainly. Libbie Au, with the Growth Alliance for Greater Evansville. The spreadsheets you received in your packets is the same compliance information I presented in August. After consulting with Mr. Ahlers, it appears that in order to close out the report and have the paperwork signed, the Council will need to make a formal motion accepting the report and finding the company in compliance.

President Abell: Does anyone have any questions of Ms. Au? Roll call vote please.

President Abell: Would you like to stay for the resolution, and Mr. Ahlers has asked to be excused because he has a conflict with this.

Jeff Ahlers: Yes, I’m going to excuse myself on the next matter and you guys just wave at me when you’re done.

President Abell: We’ll drag down an attorney if we need a legal answer. There’s bound to be a couple in the building.

Libbie Au: The resolution before you is in regards to the S Properties tax phase-in. S Properties was granted a phase-in by the County Council on April 6, 2005 for the construction of a high-tech office building. At the advice of their accountants and counsel, the company did not file for the phase-in in 2006 when the project was only partially completed, but did wait until 2007. The Auditor’s Office, with all tax phase-ins, does undertake partial assessments, so they began the phase-in in 2006. With me today is Mr. Schopmeyer, counsel for S Properties, who would be happy to answer any questions regarding the resolution.

President Abell: Do you want to come forward, Mr. Schopmeyer, and I’ll see if any members of the Council want to, I guess first I need a motion to accept this to get it on the floor.

Councilmember Goebel: I think the only thing that I had and I think Libbie responded was the amount of interest is somewhere around $17, is that correct? And was that added, too?

Bill Fluty: And that was an estimate – it may change to some degree depending on how quickly it’s processed.

Mike Schopmeyer: I’d like to, for the record, just commend Ms. Abell for her years of service, this will be the last time we appear in front of her, and Ms. Leader is not here today, but we appreciate what you’ve done for the county all these years. Thank you.

President Abell: An ordinance authorizing the issuance and sale of no more than $800,000 economic development revenue bonds, series 2008 (Catholic Diocese of Evansville, Indiana Project) of Vanderburgh County, Indiana. We discussed this last month and I need a motion.

President Abell: Anyone have any questions? I don’t think there’s anyone here to answer them, but – oh, there are. There are people here to answer them. Oh, okay, well, I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you. Does anyone have any questions? I think we were pretty straight on this.

President Abell: Yeah, we were expecting the bishop. Okay, I don’t think we’re going to have any questions. If you want to stay around, we’re going to vote on it. Roll call vote please.

President Abell: Thank you, gentlemen, I’m sorry you had to sit through a long meeting for nothing.

Jeff Ahlers: We didn’t vote on that last month, this is the first time the bond --

President Abell: No, we did talk about it, but because this is our Personnel & Finance meeting, I just need a motion from someone that this is final action.

Jeff Ahlers: What we needed to do is have a motion like we normally do on this bond, that for unanimous passage, that it doesn’t have to come back for another reading, that this would be the first and final reading.

Jeff Ahlers: Yeah, so vote on this motion that it be a first and final reading if it’s unanimously passed and then we’ll vote on the bond ordinance again.

Jeff Ahlers: Yeah, let’s go ahead just to make sure that the record is clear, go ahead and –

President Abell: Just to make sure the record is clear, we’re going to vote on the bond again.

President Abell: The next order of business is the agreement to extend the interlocal agreement to provide for a joint department of Central Dispatch. I had met a couple of times with the Mayor regarding our contract, our interlocal agreement with the city had expired regarding Central Dispatch and what this virtually does is allows us to continue for one more year to operate as we have in the past and to give us this year to work out a working agreement with the city on how we’re going to handle this Central Dispatch. Also recognizing that there is some legislation pending that’s going to affect Central Dispatch at the state level this year. So does anyone have any questions about that? Mr. Raben?

Councilmember Raben: I’ve got maybe two. First, so there’s totally an extension of the existing agreement, no changes or amendments made within that?

President Abell: Is that correct, Mr. Ahlers? This is the Central Dispatch. It’s just totally an extension as it was with no corrections, I understand?

Jeff Ahlers: Correct, it’s just a one year extension and my understanding is, I don’t have a signed copy in front of me, but I believe that that was passed by the Commissioners a couple of weeks ago, is that correct?

Councilmember Raben: Okay, but there’s not any amendments or changes within the original agreement?

Jeff Ahlers: That is correct. This is just a one year extension because what happened was, is under the original agreement, there was – if either the city or county wanted to terminate the agreement, the notice had to be served a year in advance. They city has served that, so technically, it terminated at the end of October, and so this is to extend it for a year and then, I think, the city and county should have negotiations underway currently or are getting ready to, to then put together a new agreement, whether it changes or not, or you want to enter into a longer agreement.

Councilmember Raben: I would recommend to the body that our legal counsel and one or two or as many as three of us might want to be part of those negotiations. I was involved in some prior meetings earlier in the year on this but would volunteer to do so moving forward if that’s okay with everybody.

President Abell: Okay, do I have a motion on the floor? No, we don’t actually have a motion on the floor to extend this agreement. I do need a motion and a second.

President Abell: Okay, next on the agenda, Jo Ann Smith is here with Central Dispatch.

Jo Ann Smith: The city controller, working with Mr. Fluty on the 911 funds that were set aside for Central Dispatch out of the 2006 monies that were increased $.95 to be shared by city and county and then a portion to go to an account for Central Dispatch. We are asking for funds from this account for the first time this year. You should have received a document that we are requesting funds for the technicians’ needs, for headsets, and for computer software in the amount of $28,382.45 coming from that capital account. I believe that there is in excess of $800,000 in that account currently. Out of that account comes a $77,000 quarterly payment to AT&T. And currently, I believe, and Mr. Fluty, correct me if I’m wrong, I believe that’s all that’s currently coming out of that account. That is for a ten year contract, that $77,000 is coming out of that account for the next ten years. We will probably not only be making the request this year, but we probably will have to in the future as well, request funds from this account to operate.

President Abell: Anyone have a question? I have a question for Mr. Fluty. Are these considered capital items and can we do this legally?

President Abell: The Commission on Homeless had requested to be able to make a presentation.

Luzada Hayes: Thank you and good morning. I am Luzada Hays and I am executive director of Aurora Incorporated, which is a non-profit that is committed to ending homelessness in our community. But I also served as the resource coordinator for Destination Home, which is the Evansville-Vanderburgh County ten-year plan to end homelessness. And the oversight governing body of that implementation is the Commission on Homelessness, which is the joint city-county commission. So we just appreciate the opportunity to come and just kind of give you a progress report of the work that that commission has undertaken in the last year. We included a packet of information that should have been sent out to you. In that packet was basically a two-page written report, a matrix of all of the different activities and committees and community groups that are responsible for implementing the strategies out of Destination Home, just to kind of give you a feel of the massiveness of this endeavor. There was an organizational and an individual endorsement of support that I’ll refer to in just a moment and an invitation to attend the fourth anniversary celebration which is next Thursday, December 11^th. Part of Destination Home and the commission is to celebrate the accomplishments, so we just invite you to join us there for that. I’ll just kind of give you a few highlights and then if you have any questions, I’ll be glad to answer anything that you might have. We feel it’s important that the County Council have an understanding of the issue of homelessness as well as the activities that are going on to address it, so as your constituents, if that topic comes up, you are better informed to be able to address those questions. The format of the plan is broken down in a couple of components. One is data collection. We know that we will not be able to identify that we have actually reduced homelessness or actually ended it if we don’t have good numbers, so for the last four years the community has been working to get as many of the service providers on board with one web-based data collection, and we call that HMIS. In Indiana, they refer to it as Hoosier Management Information System. Across the country, it’s known as the Homeless Management Information System. But Evansville and Vanderburgh County providers are on a similar service that is served by all of the state of Indiana with the exception of Indianapolis. So this web-based program will be able to give us not only local numbers, but also on a state-wide level, excluding Indianapolis and there will be a report released early in ‘09 that will actually give us baseline figures that we will be able to use here going forward for our numbers, we will know how many, and it’s based on 2007. So we will begin to measure all of our benchmarks and baseline measures from the 2000 annual report that will be identified for this community. So that helps us know how the population breaks out, how many families are becoming homeless, how many individuals, and what their special needs are, how long they’ve been homeless and why they’ve become homeless, as well as their income level. So we’re really excited that we have reached a data quality level with this information gathering system. We have also, the commission has a couple of committees, one of which is a discharge planning committee and they have actually hired a staff person to work with the institutions that release individuals from their institutions with the goal of them not being released into homelessness, so we work very closely with the jail, community corrections, Department of Corrections, foster care system, nursing homes, hospitals, are the primary participants of that group, and their sole purpose is to get together and better coordinate services so that individuals that leave those institutions are not homeless upon release. We know that if they have a better housing, more stable housing situation upon release, the likelihood that they will become homeless again is greatly reduced. So this is basically a homeless prevention effort and that coalition is operating every month to turn in work on those specific issues. We know that without housing, we will not be able to end homelessness, so we have a couple of new housing projects that have come on-line this year. We have 20 units of rental assistance that has been provided through a HUD grant for individuals with disabilities, that is a scattered site grant and so we’re using existing rental facilities in the community. We also have another 20 units that will be coming on for families with disabilities that should be starting yet before the end of this year. We have also submitted an application for next year to HUD and if approved, it will serve 25 families per year for three years, so a total of 75 families over a three year period, with not only housing assistance, but also service money that will be able to help the families stabilize in housing, and thus prevent them from falling into homelessness again. That grant in particular, if awarded, will be over a million dollars coming to the community from HUD for housing and service assistance. We also have a raising incomes committee. We know that we cannot continue to develop subsidies and one of the efforts of Destination Home is to increase incomes. So that committee is working to identify best practices and career planning assessment and training programs, pipeline supply program, social entrepreneur, and work support services. So they just started this year, so next year we’re hoping that they will also have some programs in place to start helping identify individuals that could raise from a minimum wage job, up into a higher paid job and work more of a career type of program. We have a prevention program for our homeless children, zero to five currently operating in six out of our seven family shelters, and that program basically equips space within the shelter for age appropriate toys. We know with the brain research and all of the current information about brain development, that it’s very important that we reach these children while we have them and to be able to increase brain development through appropriate play. And just making sure that they have time to play. Part of this program is to have a coordinator then that will recruit volunteers that will actually come in and work with the children while they’re in the homeless shelters, and we have a funder that has totally embraced this program, and we will be releasing that next week. More information on that, so come to the celebration and you can learn about that funder that has embraced that program. Marketing and PR and promotion of the plan and permanent solutions to homelessness is very important. We have a web-site that is accessed on a national basis. We continue to receive calls from communities all across the country saying how are you doing in your ten-year plan. And the piece that they are most impressed with is the commission, that we have been able to establish an oversight body that is both the city and the county joint oversight. And that has been apparently not available or not an opportunity that many other communities have. So again, we want to thank you for your participation in that. Also, underway for next year will be Vanderburgh Homeless Connect, and this will be a one-day event where we will pull in multiple service providers on March 12. The current location is at the coliseum and we will host that day for as many of our homeless residents to come and the whole goal is when they leave there, that they will actually have received services, so there will be healthcare providers, there will be housing providers, it will be a massive effort to have multiple service providers in one place for clients to be able to access services at one time. So we’d like to also invite you to that. In your packet was an endorsement. I do not believe that we actually have an endorsement from the Council as a whole. If you would like to consider that at the celebration, we always acknowledge the endorsements that have been made, particularly by our elected officials and there is also an individual endorsement in there if you would like to sign that. I believe Mr. Fluty has already signed one for us and so we have that on file. But if anyone else would like to sign that and get that to us, then we’ll definitely acknowledge that at the December 11 – it should have been in your packets.

President Abell: It probably was. Our packets are loaded. I just wondered if anyone had theirs with them?

President Abell: Is this the one that you wanted the entire organization to sign?

President Abell: We’ll probably need a motion. Do you have another copy? Do you want to read it to us or –

Luzada Hayes: That is my only copy. I thought I had included an organizational one in case you have businesses, too, we welcome business support.

Luzada Hayes: The individual is just like the organization. The copy is the same and you’re not committing any resources, you’re just committing to the sprit that, as a community, we are embracing ending homelessness as a goal for our city.

President Abell: Yeah, If you want to and then I can sign it – in fact, we’ll vote on it.

Councilmember Sutton: This is the Destination Home – a ten-year journey to end homelessness in Evansville and Vanderburgh County. It’s an organizational endorsement of support from the Vanderburgh County Council. Destination Home, a ten-year journey to end homelessness in Evansville and Vanderburgh County is a comprehensive community development concept that challenges the previously accepted idea that homelessness will always exist in our community. As long as we continue to do what we’ve always done, we will continue to get the same results. But if we continue to work together to shelter and care for individuals and families who face homelessness and commit to the development and implementation of models that have been proven to bridge them into permanent housing and equip them with the skills and understanding to build stable lives in Evansville and Vanderburgh County, we will eliminate homelessness as we know it today. By signing this endorsement, we are committing to the spirit and philosophy of Destination Home – a ten-year journey to end homelessness in Evansville and Vanderburgh County. Our organization, the Vanderburgh County Council, will support efforts to prevent homelessness and the development of permanent solutions to the many factors that lead to homelessness. We understand that this plan is only the starting point and that the path to ending homelessness will be complicated and challenging. We will be tempted to give up and revert to our old ways, but we commit to making the vision of ending homelessness in our community a reality. Signed this 3^rd day of December, 2008.

President Abell: Mr. Sutton, would you like to make that in the form of a motion?

Councilmember Sutton: I would like, Madam President, I would like to move that we accept the endorsement for the Destination Home program for the Vanderburgh County Council.

President Abell: And I have signed this on behalf of the Council but although there is no place for it, I would like to have Sarah start it with Mr. Sutton and if all of you would sign it at the bottom, I think that would be nice to have all the Council’s signatures on it.

Luzada Hayes: Great, we thank you so much and then the other thing is, there is actually a Council appointment to the Commission on Homelessness. We’ve not had any active participation from the County Council and would really welcome that.

President Abell: On the Commission on Homeless? I believe Mr. Sutton is our appointment to that. Mr. Sutton, aren’t you our appointment on the Commission to End Homelessness?

President Abell: Is that not the organization that we just did the resolution – isn’t that – oh, that was Affordable Housing Trust Fund. I’m sorry. Okay.

Luzada Hayes: So if that appointment could be made or if I could learn who that person is, then we would be glad to –

President Abell: Mr. Sutton, we’ll appoint Mr. Sutton. I think he’d be – because he is on the Affordable – he has been very active with this. That’s why – he has been hands-on and he –

Luzada Hayes: That would be a great fit and then Mr. Shetler also served, when he was in the Commission role, he served on the commission as well. Tom, is there anything you want to say about the Commission or the effort?

Councilmember Shetler: No, it’s a good organization and they’ve done a lot of great work in the last four years and I greatly appreciate the work that they do in our community.

President Abell: The only comment that I have is, I didn’t hear it maybe and I know Mr. Sutton has mentioned this several times, is that I think it would be a good part of your training with the career development to also include some credit counseling because many times this board understands that it’s not just to increase your income, it’s also to cut your expenses, that keep your books balanced. So maybe as you’re teaching them how to increase their income, they also need to learn to cut their expenses and not use their credit card.

Councilmember Sutton: That’s an excellent point and there is an initiative that is underway even right here in our community and Evansville is really leading in the Midwest in terms of this initiative. It’s called the Bank on Evansville program, it’s open to all Vanderburgh County residents. And essentially, what that program is, is it’s taking individuals from being unbanked to being bankable. But as a part of that process, they would receive financial education so that they can understand the implications of some of the financial decisions that they have made or that they may possibly make. They’re tying that with a program called EITC or the Earned Income Tax Credit, which many people do not take advantage of, so that not only are you building assets, but then you know what to do with those assets when you obtain them. Yeah, that would be a really great tie. In January, there’s going to be a kick-off and I don’t want to say anything that I shouldn’t say, but a big kick-off in January that announces this program would be a great tie in with the Destination Home program.

President Abell: I think that’s great and I think that the economic climate of our country right how, I don’t know if anyone has officially called it a recession, but it certainly is going to become much more important as we go – oh, they announced it a couple days ago. Well see, I’ve been asleep. It’s been a recession in my house ever since the kids went to college.

Luzada Hayes: Thank you so much for your time. You have my card if you ever have questions or, you know, I serve at your pleasure to answer anything you have or discuss any issues.

President Abell: Thank you. Did you have something else? I saw Mr. Rector has arrived.

Councilmember Goebel: He can wait, I was going to make a point to Mr. Sutton, if you don’t mind. Your measure that you brought up at the last meeting as far as affordable housing and 100% of the funds staying here, I guess you got the email from Senator Deig, he’s going to carry your version forward, so thank you for doing that.

Councilmember Sutton: The Council and the Commission and then the city also passed the resolution as well.

Dave Rector: Good morning, Dave Rector, Building Authority. I’ve been at the new jail all morning and didn’t know you needed me until I listened to my voice mail. The phones don’t work good out there.

President Abell: Since Mr. Raben is the finance chairman I’ll let him take over.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, Dave, we had a lot of discussion, there is a request in Superior Court account 1370-3605 Moving Expense, which you’re aware of what that is, in the amount of $1,000. And there was some questions raised as to why the Building Authority is not picking up that expense. And someone had stated that in a number of years, no one has seen this type of request come forward before and, you know, if that could be done in-house and what have you. So I guess that’s why you got called back in here.

Dave Rector: First off, it’s not my request, it’s Superior Court’s request. This came about, Judge Lloyd called and I guess it’s traditional that when there is a vacancy on Judge’s row, that then the next judge can move into the vacating judge’s office, and asked if we could assist with that. I told her I didn’t object to doing that at all, we’d help as we could, but we wouldn’t be paying for that and the reason the Building Authority is not paying for the move, it’s a discretionary move. How do I say this –

Dave Rector: The Building Authority doesn’t care if she moves or not. She doesn’t need to move as far as we’re concerned because it’s a discretionary move. It’s up to Superior Court then, to pay for that move. We do pay for moves associated with if we re-carpet areas or if we remodel areas, if it’s part of a project, we would take care of it, but as a discretionary move, just because one office is wanting to move to another, we have not done that. What we are doing, though, to help out with it at our expense is, I did have a space planner do some space planning for not only Judge Lloyd’s area moving to Judge Bowers, but new Judge Kiely’s area moving to Judge Lloyd’s area, so we’d see how the furniture would fit in there, will it fit, what electrical/data changes are we going to have to do and I’m taking care of that in-house with maintenance, and also re-doing the panic buttons in those. So I am trying to help out some with it, but the move itself isn’t something we would do. And $1,000 should be a not to exceed. I talked to a local moving company, told them about what we’re moving, how long we think it will take and how many men, and the company thought they could do it not to exceed that $1,000.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, I mean, that answers my question and a point that I attempted to make earlier and I didn’t, but we’ll have to remember, too, this building, their budget is split by the city and if the city was moving around offices, I don’t know that I would want to be charged for the expense of what they’re doing or the county’s portion of that, which –

Dave Rector: When EPD moved from upstairs here and other areas into the old Sheriff’s Department, they paid for the move. We assisted with it, and I don’t mind helping facilitate the project at all, but those are discretionary moves.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, if there is no other questions, I mean, I guess, with that, I’ll move approval.

President Abell: Do you mean where they could transfer rather than have an appropriation? I don’t know. Judge Dietsch has left a message for me to give him a call, so –

Dave Rector: He also called me yesterday and we traded calls, so I’m not sure what he wanted. There was some discussion, too, with Judge Lloyd and, you know, oftentimes, Bennie does some small moves, and Bennie is just Bennie. And he said, well, can we get some safe house people? I’m trying to – I’m trying to say this correctly. Again, I said I don’t care if we use safe house people to move, but I said I don’t think you want safe house people moving a Judge’s office. But that’s up to you. I said, you know, I think when it comes to a Judge’s office, you probably want a professional company moving those files and accessories and things. But there was that discussion, could we use somebody other than a professional company.

President Abell: My question, now that Mr. Rector has answered it as he has, which is actually sort of what I thought but I didn’t say it, because it’s very difficult, is whether or not Superior Court’s senior judge and other judges have agreed to this money being taken out of their, appropriated under their names. I mean, I kind of got the feeling from Judge Dietsch he wasn’t just real excited about it. I don’t know how the rest of you felt about that, but –

Dave Rector: I did talk to Judge Pigman to make sure that, since he is the senior judge now, that this was approved by the judges to do that, and he said yes. And I said well, there will be a cost for that.

Dave Rector: I don’t know that he knows it was $1,000, but I just said there was a cost associated with the move.

Councilmember Sutton: Being that there was no second and essentially the motion died, I think the appropriate thing would be to ask those on the Superior Court side to look in their budget for ways in which they can find a transfer. I’m sure there are areas within their budget that haven’t totally been expended. I think that would be the most appropriate thing for them to do.

President Abell: Okay, is that the feeling of the Council? I mean, I’m going to call Judge Dietsch after we get through, so I’ll be happy to relay whatever message you want me to.

Councilmember Raben: I mean, if that’s what we need to do, that’s what we’ll do.

Councilmember Sutton: I mean, have they looked through their Petit Jurors and their other accounts? I’m sure they can come to some agreement.

Dave Rector: We’ll help however you’d like us to help except for paying for it.

Councilmember Raben: The only problem with that is, if it requires a transfer, and the move is going to take place this month, --

Dave Rector: She requested that we do it December 22^nd. She is going on vacation for the rest of the year.

Councilmember Raben: I’m sure Judge Kiely is going to want to have his shop set up January 1, so that’s going to be the only thing, if it’s not a line that you can pay this from it’s going to be an issue.

Dave Rector: Judge Kiely has an office in Judge Heldt’s chambers. He is obviously going to have a staff now once he’s – Magistrate Kiely has an office, Judge Kiely doesn’t.

Dave Rector: And if you don’t do anything and then you decide to, I mean, just tell me you’re going to do it, and I’ll go ahead and get the project completed knowing that you’re going to take some action.

Councilmember Sutton: Does it sound like an additional item on the agenda on the 17^th?

Councilmember Raben: Okay, well, then we’ll bring it back on the 17^th. I guess since we’ve got on that subject, the room is reserved, Sarah was able to confirm the reservation for this room December 17^th at 8:30 a.m.

Councilmember Raben: I had mentioned that there will probably be some housekeeping items in regards to the Assessor’s Office. One other item that I neglected to mention is, as everyone recalls earlier in the year, we were given another responsibility as a Council, and this is in regards to IC 6-1.1-17-3.5, that we are now the oversight committee for several other budgets and taxing units: as an example, the library, the trustees in every township, the town of Darmstadt, and what have you. So I know everyone probably, some have looked at some of those budgets and reviewed the ones that were made available to them. But they are all now available, copies of these budgets have been made available. They are in the Council’s office. There’s too much, it would cost too much to print seven individual copies of this, but they are inside the Council’s office. Sarah would be happy to get them out and if anybody wants to go through and spend some time reviewing those budgets, but that is the other action we’ll need to take December 17^th, is to stamp those budgets.

President Abell: Mr. Raben, I notice that the Library Board is here and rather than them having to come back on the 17^th, could we hear whatever they might – I mean, I’ve gone over their budget and I’m fine with it. Is there anything extra that you wanted to add?

Marcia Au: Thank you, Madam President, and Councilmembers. We’re all charting new waters here and I’d be happy to answer any questions about the Evansville-Vanderburgh Public Library budgets. Our board chair, Rolland Eckels is here this morning with us.

Marcia Au: Oh, I’m sorry, I’m Marcia Au and I am the Library director. And we also have with us Greg Hager, who is the director of Willard Library. And the county library has been the taxing unit for the Willard Library for, this will be the fourth budget that we prepared, and that was a legislative move made about four years ago.

Councilmember Raben: Well, not any questions maybe in regards to this year’s budget, but, as you recall, Marcia, I had raised the question five or six years ago about assuming responsibility for the law library here within this building. And I still think that that’s a function because it’s made available to the public, we’re required to maintain a law library and hard copy books, and I still think that that needs to be a function or responsibility held by the actual Evansville-Vanderburgh County Library.

Marcia Au: And we’d be happy to sit down and talk with Council again or with yourself about those possibilities.

President Abell: There was one question raised about the percentage of salary increases. What salary increase percentage did you –

Marcia Au: And our total operating budget increase was a 3.2 percent, and we split salary increases. There were approximately 28 people above what we call mid-range, and those people received two percent, and (inaudible)– I have that in here somewhere -- the other staff who received salary increases received three percent. Myself, I didn’t take a percentage increase this year.

Marcia Au: Thank you. And we’d be happy to work with the Council in the future and I’m sure we will.

Councilmember Goebel: I do have one question. Are you happy that we now have oversight?

Marcia Au: It’s a new working relationship and new things are sometimes hard to adjust to, but we will work our very best to make that adjustment.

President Abell: They actually had their budget prepared and met with me prior to our budget hearings. So they did a real good job.

Councilmember Sutton: I did have a question in terms of, most people, since this is the first time you guys have appeared before us, and I’m anticipating reviewing the other budgets, so the degree of familiarity that we have with your budget is relatively low, how is the library funded? If you can talk about how you guys are receiving – how your budget is –

Marcia Au: Let me give you some percentages as a breakout, which will be helpful to you, I hope. We receive approximately, and it varies a little from year to year, 60 percent through property tax, about 22 to 24 percent from the County Option Income Tax, and the rest, miscellaneous taxes, excise tax, financial institutions tax, we get a few federal dollars in support of our talking books for the blind and physically handicapped program, and we also get E-rate dollars, which are reimbursable only, so we always have to budget for those. We’re anticipating an offset of about $58,000 in next year’s budget for E-rate. And that is applied directly, we have to apply it directly to communications charges.

Councilmember Sutton: And do you have any state regulations that restrict your budget in the amount of increase that you can effectually go –

Marcia Au: We are tied to the average non-farm income increase statewide and this year, that was four percent.

Councilmember Sutton: And that is communicated to you guys through the Department of Local Government Finance?

Councilmember Raben: Just real quick, your budget is prepared when and when is it approved by your board?

Marcia Au: There is a budget calendar, and I believe that we had sent that to you. But let me get that out. It’s a several month process. We start in the spring actually preparing, talking to the various suppliers, utility companies, we actually present to our finance committee end of July - early August, then we mail the budget to the full board, we have the first reading in August, then we deliver it to be advertised, there are two publication dates in the local paper. This year, then we presented it to County Council, because there was a stipulated time frame in which we were to do that. After it was published, then we had a public hearing and an adoption meeting, and we are now presenting to you and we will also have a DLGF hearing scheduled much later. We are not sure when.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. Back to, you actually, after the budget is prepared, you take it to the board –

Councilmember Raben: September? They’re working on the same budget deadlines we are.

Councilmember Raben: Looking ahead for next year, trying to incorporate all these budgets with ours would, I mean, it would probably, it would be too much for this board to handle during our normal budget sessions, but maybe we need to have a time or establish a day or something like that in September that we’ll review these budgets before they go to their board or –

Councilmember Sutton: You know, we’ve been very good at really making our process a lot more efficient and essentially we’re able to complete everything within that one week time span. Perhaps maybe we need to go back and add that second week for all these other budgets that we have to review, not that we are looking to add a second week, but it looks like we’re being forced into some kind of way where we can get an opportunity to review the budgets. I mean, we do take the time to have the one meeting with the city, but these others, we’ve got to find a way where we can provide a public forum where they can be heard, too.

Councilmember Raben: I think it would be important that we probably have a chance to go through them before they’re finalized then by their board. I think it’s going to be a lot to do during our normal budget sessions, I mean, it’s, to do it right, I mean, and I think that’s what everybody’s interest is, is to make every effort to review these budgets just as we do the budgets we’ve been responsible for forever. Maybe we don’t have to talk about this today, but it’s something we’re going to need to do in the next few months, so we –

President Abell: The organizational meeting would be a good time to bring that up, I think.

Councilmember Goebel: I just have one quick question, does the city have any authority as far as oversight, since most of the buildings are – was that not an original thought?

Marcia Au: Actually, we were a county and a city contractual library, I believe. Jan?

Marcia Au: Yeah, I had to make sure I didn’t get that turned around, a number of years ago, and then actually consolidated in 1978, I believe. So once we became a county library district, under Indiana law, then, in fact, we’re a county unit rather than a city unit.

Councilmember Shetler: Do we have a – we used to have like a county tax board or something like that. Is that obsolete now?

Councilmember Shetler: Alright, so in essence, really, what this is doing, it’s kind of replacing that old function. And if I recall, those guys really met what, four to six hours in a given day sometime in October and reviewed after everything was done. I don’t, maybe that’s going to be before your time.

Councilmember Shetler: Okay, and what they did is they sat and reviewed for a partial day and –

President Abell: And the county had a percentage of the vote and the town of Darmstadt had a percentage of the vote, and the city had a percentage of the vote.

President Abell: And I think the city controlled everything because their vote was so much heavier than everyone else’s.

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, and usually it was just a – and I think that’s what the intent is here is an overseer, not so much to get involved in the, you know, line item by line item thing, but more of an overseer, I guess, and function the same way that that tax review board, I think is what it was called.

President Abell: I think what we might want to do is come up with some kind of a form that says how much is your salary increase, what are you doing this year you haven’t done in the past. Just some highlights instead of going line item by line item. Just highlight things that are going to change and –

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, and again, I think we’ll leave that up to the individual Councilmembers, too, but I think since we are the oversight committee, we’re going to have to allow for public opinion here, so I, for one, its been a number of years, but I used to give a little lecture during budget session about how we needed to have oversight on budgets, particularly like the library, where we could do all the right things and cut deep and we didn’t really have a huge impact on what it actually did to property taxes. So I’m all too excited about having some oversight in some of these budgets.

Marcia Au: And if I may, I would be happy to sit down with any of the Councilmembers and review budget practices for libraries, or if the Council would like to assign a person to work with us and be our liaison to the Council, I’d be happy to do that.

President Abell: That’s another thing we can take up in the organizational meeting. Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Sutton: I don’t think taxpayers really understand how many different ways the property taxes, County Option Income, how many those ways those things are divided up until you get that property tax bill, then you can really see where the dollars actually go and I think Jim is right on point, in that some kind of way in which the public has a chance to give feedback on all those different things that utilize their dollars. We don’t have that and I think we can create something like that. So that’s something we could discuss how we could put it together.

President Abell: For those of you who going to be reviewing some of the budgets, I would tell you that I met with Lisa, the City Controller, before she left and went over the city’s budget as best I could. Not knowing how the city operates entirely, it was kind of difficult, but she was very helpful and I didn’t see anything that was a red flag.

President Abell: Moving right along, we have on here the BKD contract. Does everyone know, did they get copies of this? No, nobody knows. BKD had talked to me some time back about, rather than coming in and getting a big increase one year, just having a minimal increase every year on their fees. Now, whether or not you want to do that, it’s solely up to you, I just put it on here for discussion purposes as to whether or not you want to look at the request. I’ll have Sandie get it out to all of you. She has a copy of what they’ve requested. I don’t think I’ve seen it, and then at the 17^th meeting we can vote on whether or not you want to do that. We’ll advertise it as something to vote on. It was just going to be, like if we gave a 2.5 percent salary increase, they were going to increase their fees similarly so that – and it may not be the percentage you want to be or you may not want to be at any percentage, but in my discussions with them, I thought that a little bit – if we would do it every year, it would be easier for us to budget than to have them come in one year and want to increase their fees tremendously and then we be stuck with one year of big expense.

President Abell: So we will get those out to you and we will put those on the agenda for the meeting on December 17^th, which has been changed from December the 10^th to December the 17^th, which was my next item, is the next meeting. So if no one has any objection, we will advertise that we will meet for an official meeting on December the 17^th 8:30 a.m. here in this room, and it will also be our Personnel & Finance meeting for the January meeting. Is there anything else to come before this body?

Councilmember Sutton: One other item, in our packet we have the financial statement for us. And before this meeting we had 1.2 million in the General fund, unappropriated, and we’ve got just a shade over a half million in the Riverboat fund. I was going to ask Auditor Fluty, if those funds are not in some way or another appropriated or there isn’t a contract that binds any of those funds necessarily, what happens with those Riverboat funds at the end of the year and then beginning with January 1? Does that revert into the General Fund or how does that work?

President Abell: And its nice to know we don’t have to spend every penny we have.

President Abell: If there is no further business, we stand adjourned until – wait a minute. Oh, I’m sorry. Sir, I didn’t see...

Wayne Fehd: Yes, I live here in Vanderburgh County. I’m the – excuse me, I’ve got a bad cold. That’s why I sat in the back row. I’m the elected supervisor of Vanderburgh County Soil & Water Conservation District here in Vanderburgh County and I just come by to visit with you all, and wanted to thank you for your help for the past year, looking forward to the new year.

Wayne Fehd: We’re doing our job trying to keep it cleaner and keep the soil up on the hill where it belongs.

Wayne Fehd: Yeah. Try to keep the nitrogen down in the yards where we put – on the city yards around the homes, so we keep it out of our water supplies.

President Abell: And we do get regular correspondence from your organization and we certainly appreciate that.

Wayne Fehd: And anytime in the future if you want to come out and visit with us, we’d be happy to have you come out and –

President Abell: Well, for the record, you might want to tell everyone where you’re located.

Wayne Fehd: Well, we’re out here across from the 4-H Center, at the Vanderburgh County Soil & Water Conservation Office, which is where we have our meetings. I’m not sure when the next one is right now, but they do post that.

President Abell: Okay, any other questions? Well thank you for coming. I’m sorry you had to endure such a long meeting.

President Abell: Well, thanks for coming. The only person left I see out there is Mr. Langhorne. Do you have something you want to tell us? Not a word, huh? Okay. We’ll see about that in the morning, I guess. Any further business? We stand adjourned until December 17^th.

(There being no further business to come before the Council, the meeting was adjourned at 10:47 a.m.)

1030-4220	Office Machines	5,079.00	5,079.00
1030-3530	Contractual Services	875.00	875.00
Total		5,954.00	5,954.00

1050-1911	Sheriff Retirement	105,000.00	105,000.00
Total		105,000.00	105,000.00

1220-2600	Office Supplies	2,200.00	2,200.00
1220-3410	Printing	500.00	500.00
Total		2,700.00	2,700.00

1303-3948	Death Penalty	20,000.00	20,000.00
Total		20,000.00	20,000.00

1370-3050	Patient/Inmate Care	275,000.00	275,000.00
1370-3052	YCC Operating Cost	16,488.00	16,488.00
Total		291,488.00	291,488.00

1480-1971	Accrued Payments	105,296.00	105,296.00
1480-1900	FICA	8,056.00	8,056.00
1480-4220	Office Machines	550.00	550.00
Total		113,902.00	113,902.00

3660-4196	Facility Improvement	635,000.00	635,000.00
Total		635,000.00	635,000.00

From: 1070-2720	Lab Supplies	500.00	500.00
1070-2740	Chemicals	500.00	500.00
1070-3520	Equipment Repair	1,200.00	1,200.00
1070-3540	Maintenance Contract	3,571.00	3,571.00
To: 1070-4122	Buildings & Equipment	5,771.00	5,771.00

From: 1460-3000	Bond & Insurance	100.00	100.00
1460-3010	Other Insurance	259.00	259.00
1460-3130	Travel/Mileage	500.00	500.00
1460-3450	Yellow Pages	96.00	96.00
1460-3730	Continuing Education	1,275.00	1,275.00
To: 1460-3410	Printing	96.00	96.00
1460-3140	Telephone	2,134.00	2,134.00

From: 2042-32500	Out of Home Placements-Foster	85,000.00	85,000.00
2042-32520	Out of Home Place/Institution	85,000.00	85,000.00
2042-32550	Misc. Cost of Wards	10,000.00	10,000.00
2042-32850	Misc. Cost Wards-Prob.	2,500.00	2,500.00
To: 2042-32540	Preservation Services	170,000.00	170,000.00
2042-30090	Child Welfare Services	12,500.00	12,500.00

From: 2130-3130	Travel/Mileage	7,000.00	7,000.00
2130-3530	Contractual Services	3,810.00	3,810.00
2130-1170-2130	Med. Lab Tech. Super.	1,000.00	1,000.00
To: 2130-4230	Motor Vehicle	10,810.00	10,810.00
2130-1990	Extra Help	1,000.00	1,000.00

From: 2861-3310	Training	2,000.00	2,000.00
2861-3130	Travel/Mileage	600.00	600.00
2861-4431	Hazmat Response Equipment	500.00	500.00
To: 2861-3210	Emergency Mgmt.	3,100.00	3,100.00

2780-1920	Insurance	5,000.00	5,000.00
Total		5,000.00	5,000.00