The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 5th day of December, 2007 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 8:32 a.m. by Vanderburgh County Council President, Marsha Abell.

President Abell: I’d like to call to order the December 5th, 2007 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: Mrs. Deig, would you like to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

President Abell: I trust everyone has read their minutes from the November 7th meeting and would entertain a motion to approve.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, thank you. Good morning. First on the agenda under Sheriff, we have a request in the amount of $3,100 and I’m going to go ahead and include the Jail, which is 1051-1850 Overtime for 5,000. This is here as an appropriation and also as a transfer, so I’m going to move that we set the appropriation request in at zero and approve the transfers.

Councilmember Sutton: So the motion is just only on the appropriation and when we get to the transfers –

Councilmember Raben: Okay next, Voter Registration in the amount of $1,131, I’ll move approval.

Councilmember Raben: Okay next, under Reassessment, Pigeon Township Assessor, Maintenance Contract, in the amount of $772. I’ll move approval.

Councilmember Raben: Jail Project, 3660-4196 in the amount of $374,000, I’ll move approval.

Councilmember Shetler: I have a question in one area here. I’m trying to find it real quickly. I think it had to do –

Councilmember Shetler: Yes, if he could, please. The medical negative air, $21,000, and the question I have on that is, I believe that this might be something involved with a design element, at least I think its in question here, I think, between the Commissioners and the original people who designed the building. So, I don’t know, Sheriff, if you could –

Eric Williams: I think that’s – Sheriff Eric Williams. Councilman Shetler did come out to the building and we went through each one of those items on the list last week, and I appreciate that. Yes, that one item is one of the items that we feel is probably a design error or oversight and I do believe the Commissioners and Building Authority are working with the design people and the building people to correct that. It is our intention just to get that corrected as quickly as possible because of the Health Department and our needs, but yeah, I think that falls into that category of it probably is an oversight or a design error.

Councilmember Shetler: So I didn’t know if it was something we want to appropriate now within this bundle here or if its something we should wait on to see how far they can get with the contractors on it from past on it, and if we can get that money from them. So that’s kind of where I was at the point right now.

Eric Williams: I have no issue if you want to subtract that amount from the total amount at this point in time because of that reason. We’re going to have to get it fixed one way or the other down the road.

President Abell: Do you know how long, how far in the process the Commissioners are?

Eric Williams: I know the Building Authority has hired an outside source and they have been going to meetings and reviewing back and forth. And I can’t speak on their behalf but I know its an ongoing process trying to work those details out. I believe Mr. Rector is here if you’d like to ask him. He may be able to address that more closely.

Dave Rector: Good morning. Dave Rector, Building Authority. Commissioner Nix and I have had several meetings with the design firms and architects. We are, in fact, this week trying to schedule a conference call with them to resolve some issues and hope to have resolution to some of those issues, I don’t know that we will or not. The negative pressure in the area for the medical isolation is a necessity. We’ll have to do it one way or the other. But, like the Sheriff, I understand if that’s something you want to remove from there and we’ll handle it in another way. But it will have to be done.

Councilmember Sutton: I was going to ask, with the, I mean, you’ve got a lot of different items within this request here, are you intending to bundle this all into one bid package or has that process already begun?

Dave Rector: Those numbers you see are reflected from either contractor quotes or estimates. If we get approval for this money, then I’ll go out and actually get firms quotes on these items that are required to do the projects.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay, I guess I’m – I don’t know if, from our standpoint, if at some point in time that is drawn up on the original contractor, the one element and pulled out, unless we believe that there is going to be some overspending here, I don’t know if there’s necessarily any need to delay approving this, I guess, request today, so that you guys can begin the bidding process. And so I guess we will be anticipating a repeal at some point in time if the contractor does come back and make good on the other item.

Dave Rector: Yeah, I hate to see the whole list of projects held up because of this one item. And so if that’s important to all of you to take that out, please do so and we’ll move forward with the others and we’ll try to resolve this issue with the negative pressure in another manner.

Councilmember Sutton: And that’s kind of the point I’m making, so I mean, if you can just keep us in the loop where that – I mean, how long do you anticipate the bidding process to take on all of these projects?

Dave Rector: We’ll immediately get to that. This time of year, we all know the holidays, it will delay, but I hope by the end of January we’ll have firm pricing on all of this. And then weather dependent on some of them, as you can see, we’ll get started in early spring, some of them this winter if its approved like the sound insulation in the pods, that can be done during the wintertime. The outside projects will wait till the spring, but we’ll go ahead and start getting pricing on them immediately.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, and I guess my other issue is just there are a couple of things in there that are security areas that I really wouldn’t want us to delay on, like the camera situation, the glass that shields from the public. I’d like to see us not delay on at least those projects.

Dave Rector: We’ll start the projects we can immediately and the Sheriff, with our security vendor that did the original jail, we’ll work with them to install the additional cameras.

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, I might point out, I’m really solidly in favor of every aspect of this and I’m really in favor of even the medical negative air aspect, except that I would hate for that to interfere with the negotiations going on and then for some reason we’re not able to get the $21,000 back from the architect/designer on that, and that’s my main concern. I’d like to see the county be able to keep that money in their pocket, so I would like to see us approve everything but leave that out for the time being, and then if the negotiations break down and we’re not able to do it, then we can take that matter up, because it needs to be done. It has to be done, but its something we can deal with at a later point in time, I think. That’s my feeling.

Dave Rector: And I’ll talk to Commissioner Nix, but at some point when I hope we resolve these issues, we’ll update you on how things turned out.

President Abell: And possibly by the time you get the actual figures on it, it will be resolved anyway, so –

Councilmember Goebel: I was just curious, Mr. Rector, this has not been addressed through the duration or the length of time we’ve been using that jail, what type of setting or time frame do you think we have to have the negative air pressure in place?

Dave Rector: Immediately. It worked at first. We had the area under negative pressure and then we started quarterly checking the balancing reports and its just diminished over time until the point where it was failing and continues to fail and we have a new design to correct that so that we can get it under the negative pressure. The Health Department, I believe, had told the Sheriff, do not use it until its corrected, so we’ll have it corrected. I mean, we have the design complete, to begin on it.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. I mean, are we relatively sure that we do have a legitimate complaint with the original contractor and that there is a better than not chance that we are going to get reimbursed for this?

Dave Rector: There is no doubt it’s a legitimate design error that it wasn’t working for whatever reasons. Do I know that there’s going to be resolution through them for that? No. I do know that we will correct it one way or the other because the Health Department has said so. But it’s a flaw in the pressurization across the coils and the reheat coils and the filters, and it was just – we need to beef up the motors, actually, and change out some fans, that’s what we’re going to do.

Councilmember Raben: And you had stated that the Health Department has told us, don’t use it until its corrected. How does that affect us? What are we – is this the entire unit?

Eric Williams: It hasn’t caused great grief yet. The negative air section of the medical unit is for those areas where we would house an inmate that has tuberculosis or something, we’re still using the cells, the standard cells when we need to, but when we encounter an inmate that would need that kind of treatment, we’re at a loss. We’re right back where we started before we even built this section. At this point in time it hasn’t created a lot of grief yet, but you know, tomorrow we could get an inmate in our custody that would have be to in that kind of setting.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. The other option is take them to Deaconess as an example and let them –

Eric Williams: That’s one option. The other, you know, historically, a lot of times you’ve just done your best to do it by keeping them in the far corner of the jail and hoping for the best.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, we could probably spend it in outside medical care if we had one or two episodes between now and fixing it. But I would encourage you, and certainly urge you to fight it and try to get the county reimbursed for this.

President Abell: Any other discussion? Mr. Raben, do you want to present a motion?

President Abell: I didn’t know if you wanted to change it or leave it with the 374?

Councilmember Raben: The original motion was for 374. I was going to allow it to stay at 374 with hopes of being reimbursed and not spending it with outside providers should we run into the situations that the Sheriff had described. We could be out this in a few days, probably.

Eric Williams: Thank you, and once we get the projects done, anything that’s left in there, we’ll definitely repeal back to that fund for you.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, Madam President, we have a lot of transfers including some late transfers. I’ll give everybody an opportunity to review the ones they’ve not already seen. We can ask if there’s any questions of any of those transfers. If not, we’ll lump them together. I do have a request on the County Assessor’s regular budget transfer.

President Abell: Mr. Weaver? I don’t think he’s here, Mr. Raben. We could – do you want me to have Sarah call him and ask him to come in?

Councilmember Raben: My question on this one is, back in March we approved like $120,000 for outside contractual services for doing the commercial and industrial trending and I want to first find out if that trending is completed before we pull $13,000 out of there. Does anyone have any other questions if we – we’ll skip over this one – is everyone okay with all the other transfers?

Councilmember Leader: I’d like to ask Mr. Craig to come up and ask him about the request at Burdette for Other Employees we’re transferring into Security, unless you’ve spoken.

Councilmember Leader: Thank you. If you would, Steve, discuss that transfer from Other Employees into Security. Are you adding additional hours for security or what is that $3,000 for?

Steve Craig: Well, there’s several things that is involved in that in a year. One of them is the amount of hours that the security works if the Discovery Lodge is rented, then my security stays until everyone leaves the building. They’re supposed to be out of the building at 12. In a perfect world they’d all be out of there at 12, but a lot of times they’re not. Some of the venues have seven - eight hundred people. Bands, stuff like that, the security stays over so that they can lock the building down and set the alarms. Some of the other ones, I have not got any extra money in the last few years in the security and every year we’ve got a raise, especially on my Sheriff’s Department. The Sheriffs that I employ have got a raise every year just like we do, a three percent, and it finally caught up with us. A lot of times I try to cut them back some on weekdays when we’re not as busy, but like I said, when we have buildings rented all the way until midnight, sometimes they don’t get out until later. And over a year, it adds up. And then we’re transferring the money out of our part-time account.

Councilmember Leader: This is through the end of December, would you anticipate additional security costs next year as well?

Steve Craig: We could have it. Like I said, I try to keep it down and then there’s instances where we can save without compromising the integrity of the security, but I may be back here next December asking to transfer some, too.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay, well, their request, they’re transferring out of that YCC Operating cost and really, -- do you know something about that, Bill?

President Abell: I think Mr. Fluty can answer that question. Mr. Craig, you can sit down.

Bill Fluty: Yes. We have some bills that came in from, I think, the Patient/Inmate Care is for the ones we send out of county. And then they have enough money in their YCC account, which is really just the same money, to pay the November and the December bills for that, and this will take care of the rest of the ones they send out of the county. So we asked them to move that money over. And then, of course, they will get new money January 1st.

Councilmember Sutton: I mean, are we anticipating this kind of surplus in the– even though it is the same thing, the YCC account in 2008? I mean, are we over budgeting there?

Bill Fluty: It varies between – you know, that cost goes up depending on how they are sentenced and at this time, that’s where the money is. So its just – its used for the same purpose whether they’re locally detained or if they’re sent out of the county.

President Abell: Mr. Sutton, I think one of the reasons there’s some money in the original YCC account is, as I recall, could be because we didn’t use, the building wasn’t ready. We had budgeted for being in there last year in January , February and they didn’t have it ready. So we have – yeah, it was a long time, I remember, and so there’s a surplus because of that. That’s why that money is there.

Bill Fluty: That is one of the reasons. Actually, they didn’t have the opportunity to send anybody to the local facility and, of course, they had to move them out of the county, so it did leave some extra money in there.

President Abell: I noticed Mr. Weaver is here if you want to ask him a question, Mr. Raben.

Jonathan Weaver: Good morning. Jonathan Weaver, Vanderburgh County Assessor. I’m sorry for my tardiness. The last time I came up here I got stitches above my eye a couple of months ago, so I haven’t been back. What’s up?

Councilmember Raben: The question is, on Contractual Services 1090-3530, this is in your transfer, your General Fund budget, that Contractual Services money was monies we put in place in March for commercial and industrial trending to be completed this year. Is that completed now?

Jonathan Weaver: Oh yes. It was completed on time – well, it was completed in September.

Jonathan Weaver: Yeah, from what I understand, its being transferred for Office Supplies.

Councilmember Raben: And that would be the next question. That’s a lot of money in Office Supplies and Office Machines. Do you have a particular –

Jonathan Weaver: Well, from what I understand, you know, we have 9,600 appeals, we need folders, we need toner, we need paper to make all the copies, so this has been what we’ve been about basically all this year is trying to organize all this stuff.

Councilmember Sutton: Is that an error on your transfer request, Mr. Weaver? It doesn’t list that there was an amount budgeted for Supplies, Machines, well, you’ve got two office supply accounts there, and, of course, this is showing a balance of zero, were you guys not budgeted anything in those line items?

Jonathan Weaver: I’m sorry to appear unprepared but, yeah, I was going over it with my Chief Deputy right before and as far as I knew, this is money that was there that we just wanted to be transferred for stuff we needed like those folders and toner, office supplies in general.

Councilmember Sutton: I mean, I asked because that’s really, on these forms, that’s really helpful for us to be able to see the amount that’s budgeted and then how much has been dispersed during the course of the year. So, you know, when people come back for requests we can kind of get a good sense of the spend rate on those requests.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, on this form here, on the transfer form, it lists in this area, you plug in how much was budgeted for the year and then how much you’ve actually spent, and then that gives us, because its right here, there’s zeroes all across and I assume there should be some numbers in here, some way or another unless we were anticipating you finding another way for you to pay for your office supplies and what have you.

Councilmember Raben: I might be able to answer that. If you recall, that probably went into the Reassessment side, all the 2000, 3000 and 4000 accounts, we put on Reassessment. But there is also another transfer for like $1,050 in the Reassessment side as well. I guess this just kind of – sends up a flag because I don’t know of another office that we appropriate $10,000 in Office Supplies. Well, with the Reassessment side, it’s a little over $11,000 in Office Supplies, so I’m just curious what the real needs are there if we’re talking about –

Jonathan Weaver: Do you want me to run downstairs and come right back up with an answer or –

Councilmember Raben: Okay, Madam President, we’ll do that. I’m going to move that all other transfers with the exception of the County Assessor/General Fund budget and County Assessor/Reassessment budget be approved.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, I’ll move on to the Amendments to the Salary Ordinance. First, under Sheriff, I’ll move to amend salary line 1050-1301 Civilian Overtime as previously approved. 1050-1210 College Incentive as previously approved. under Jail, 1051-1850 Union Overtime as previously approved. Election Office, 1210-1120 Election Assistant as previously approved. Public Defender, 1303-1970 Temporary Replacement as previously approved. Superior Court, 1370-1370 Bailiff as previously approved. German Township Assessor, amend salary line 1120-1972, it’s a Level II Certification as previously approved and the transfer, this is the Level II Certification for the township assessor, Tim Schaefer. Burdette Park, 1450-1190 Security as previously approved. County Council salary line 1480-1971 Accrued Payments as previously approved. These are payments for an employee on FMLA and will not be returning. Under Cum Bridge, 2030-1971 Accrued Payments as previously approved. These are to pay out the benefits for a deceased employee. And that’s all I have, and I make that in the form of a motion.

Lori Gonyer: I’m Lori Gonyer, the Chief Deputy and I’m the one that took care of the paperwork for the transfers, and I guess I don’t understand why there are questions, so I’m here to answer any of them.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. Well, the question was, is we’re transferring money out of a contractual account in the amount of 13,000, and we are putting 10,000 of it into Other Supplies and 3,000 into Office Machines. and 10,000, if that is Office Supplies along with another transfer later that is $1,050, it just seems like $11,050 will be a lot of Office Supplies, so we were wondering what was –

Lori Gonyer: Right. What its for is, we are expending a lot of money on toner and paper for all the 9,500 appeals, plus the folders cost us, for five boxes of 100 costs us $170 and, you know, that’s not enough to – like one box of appeals takes over 500 folders and we have tons and tons of folders. And so we’ve been going through those left and right, and labels. And so all of this is being used for the appeals process and all of the equipment use and, you know, that kind of stuff that we’ve been using. So that’s the reason for all the added expense.

Councilmember Raben: Well, and that’s understandable. I don’t think we’ve reached the number of appeals that we’ve reached this past year.

Councilmember Raben: So I understand that and I’m good with that. Motion to approve.

Councilmember Sutton: I think, too, you have to understand that you deal with this every day and we come to see your request once a year or twice a year, so helping us to understand the degree to what you are experiencing helps us and then some of the questions that we may ask, it may seemingly raise a flag, you can help shed light on that type of, the situations that you’re dealing with.

Councilmember Goebel: The only question I had is, when we got the explanation, it just said routine supplies and that leaves it pretty wide open on this end. And this is not a routine year as far as appeals go. Do you foresee next year being another landslide or will things settle down?

Lori Gonyer: We’re hoping it will be less but, you know, its hard to say. We would think it would be less, but how much less, I don’t know. I mean, some people, you know, maybe that didn’t appeal this year will see, you know, my neighbor has got it changed so maybe this year I’ll appeal, too. So its really hard to say.

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, would we be better off taking it entirely out of the Reassessment account and transfer there rather than taking it out of the General Fund?

Councilmember Raben: Well, the funds, I’m sure there’s not $10,000 in Reassessment within their account today. So we would probably have to do an additional appropriation and if they’re buying the supplies yet this year, that won’t happen until January.

Councilmember Shetler: I didn’t know on that line 2490-1090-3530 that shows a balance after it was all said and done of $19,000, if there was room to take the 10 out of that or...on that Reassessment. I’m talking about on the request for transfer, the bottom part there.

Lori Gonyer: I believe what that’s left for is the last installment payment to the commercial/industrial trender. Until the appeals are finalized, his last payment is not paid until that’s all complete.

President Abell: Any other questions? Mr. Raben, did you have more questions? Just as a note for next year, we look at them pretty close at the end of the year. Its okay to put money back in the General Fund at the end of the year. You don’t have to spend it all.

Teri Lukeman: Councilmember Sutton? Or, actually, you don’t have a second for this.

Councilmember Sutton: I wish you would give that speech in some other areas. Yes.

President Abell: Thank you, Mr. Weaver. Actually, I have given that speech to my children, Mr. Sutton. Is that all for you, Mr. Raben?

President Abell: Under Old Business, we have an ordinance requiring the Vanderburgh County Sheriff to charge an annual sex or violent offender registration fee, sex or violent offender address change fees and establishing a sex and violent offender administration fund. This is on the second reading. We did pass this last year, last month, excuse me. And we’ll need a motion to approve and a second and to vote on it for second reading.

President Abell: Under new business, the resolution to appeal for the property tax shortfall, I think all of you have that on your desk and this is in accordance with House Bill 1001. We take this action every year. The amount is estimated over the actual number that will be determined after the collection figures are received from the Treasurer and our settlement is actually completed. This information is sent along to the Department of Local Government Finance before the end of the year. I need a motion for the resolution and a second and we need to vote on this.

President Abell: Anyone have any questions or comments? I’m sure Mr. Fluty could answer any questions you might have.

Councilmember Sutton: Just for the general public, Bill, could you give at least some explanation on, you know, the amount and what this actually does, how it’s a benefit to the regular taxpayer?

Bill Fluty: Well, actually, it’s the estimated amount we have in there now because we don’t have settlement figures from the Treasurer. They will be here shortly and what it does, we’re estimating the shortfall because of the appeal process. There’s been over, I think, about 6,000 appeals that have been processed, which that will actually have a shortfall to the budget projections. And this is just an estimate to recoup that money. So it will be, as soon as those estimates comes in we will reduce this amount and move it on up to the Department of Local Government Finance.

Bill Fluty: Well, we have it in at 2.8 – 2,800,000. It will be quite a bit less than that, but like some of the other restrictions we have: we can have it high and come down, but we can’t have it low and go up. So its in there for protection. I expect it will be quite a bit less than that.

President Abell: We have a motion on the floor. Any further discussion? Roll call vote please.

President Abell: Next on our agenda is the discussion regarding the interlocal agreement between the County Highway Department and the local fire stations to pave their parking lots. Mr. Duckworth is here to explain this to us and I think he has passed out to everyone some information.

Mike Duckworth: Yes, good morning, President Abell and members of the Council. Mike Duckworth, Superintendent of the County Highway. I bring to you this morning what I hope is a, and I believe is a win-win situation for the city and the county as well. This is the culmination of a lot of discussion and getting the city and the county attorneys together on this agreement. Basically what it details is, because of the fact that the County Highway Department has the equipment to, of course, pave roads – in the last three years we’ve paved approximately 90 miles of county roadway – because we have that equipment, and Mr. Mangold, the assistant fire chief, recognizing that, contacted me about the possibility of us entering into an agreement to do some paving for them. This agreement includes three of their fire house parking lots and drives. And basically what would happen is, they would pay the vendor, the asphalt company directly, but they would reimburse the county for the use of our employees and our equipment to the tune of approximately $18,750. When we initially had talked about doing this, we were going to trade services. We were going to do the paving in exchange for street sweeping, which the utility board has an ongoing contract with Allied Waste Services to do their street sweeping. In the county, there’s approximately 24 miles of curbed roads and sediment and sand and debris tends to rest up against those areas and causes conditions that we need to give special attention to. And in the past we were able to get grants from Mr. Ballard’s organization and those grants have gone away. And so what we would ask to do is to enter into this agreement and the county would then be paid the $18,750 at the completion of the work. We would then deposit that money into our Highway account and then at some point in time, probably in the spring, I would come back and ask that that money be reappropriated for street sweeping.

President Abell: And the street sweeping would be less than the money that you’re going to get for doing the paving?

Mike Duckworth: I don’t know at this time. The estimate for the entire year that I got initially was $24,000, but in my experience, I don’t know, that was for the entire year. I would think that we could probably enter into something, say, starting in March and going through October, which would narrow that down to about the money that we would have available, so basically, it would be a wash.

Councilmember Shetler: The fact that we’re not doing 35 or 40, is that because we ran out of money or is it because we ran out of time?

Councilmember Shetler: So if we had more money, then we could do more. So the guys are idle a period of time so you’re able to do this?

Mike Duckworth: The paver itself is idle because we basically, our paving season runs between April and usually the end of October depending upon weather and availability of mix and that kind of thing.

Councilmember Shetler: And what kind of calculations did you use to come up with the $18,000?

Mike Duckworth: We based that on the amount of manpower and articulated the different positions, the laborer positions, the operator positions, the truck driver positions, and then we prorated the use of the equipment and we have calculated that by the hour to come up with the figure that we’ve got here. In other words, the use of the paver is estimated at X amount of dollars per hour. The use of the front end loader is X amount of dollars per hour. The use of dump trucks and so on and so forth.

Councilmember Shetler: I’d be interested in knowing what that X is, I guess, is my question. And also, the hourly rate that we’re applying for our manpower to be utilized on the services. I recognize that if you’re dealing with private, you’d have a profit margin based upon that and I’m assuming we’re not doing that.

Mike Duckworth: No, but we did base it on, not only their hourly rate, but what we pay in FICA and benefits as well.

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, that’s what I’m concerned about, that we have everything marked up so that we can at least recoup what we’re putting in to it, because they’re going to be applying private resources, correct? I mean, the street sweeping, more or less, is being done by a private concern.

Councilmember Shetler: And so they do have that mark-up of profit in there, so I’m trying to make sure that we get a fair share out of this thing and that we are marking ours up properly.

Mike Duckworth: I can get that information to you. I would just tell you that because we were trying to help another municipality out, you know, we put it as close to a break-even situation as we could because we felt like it was tax dollars in exchange for tax dollars in regards to us paving their property and utilizing our equipment and manpower.

Councilmember Shetler: Still our responsibility versus somebody else’s. I’d like to know those numbers a little bit, though, myself. I’m not saying to hold this up, but if I could get some of this information, it would be helpful.

President Abell: We’re back on the record. Anyone else have any questions or comments of Mr. Duckworth? Mr. Winnecke?

Councilmember Winnecke: Thank you, Madam President. Mike, what would be the time frame? Did you say that?

Mike Duckworth: Well, the agreement says 30 days unless, I think it indicates acts of God. In other words, weather –

Councilmember Winnecke: I understand that, but when did they propose actually doing the work? I understand –

President Abell: Mr. Duckworth, didn’t you tell me that they need to spend their – they’ve got to do something by the end of this year or their money goes back or...

Mike Duckworth: The money that they are utilizing here was encumbered from 2006, as I understand it. So they have to have at least the written agreements in hand before they will approach their Council to either encumber the money for next year or spend it this year. The best scenario is that we can get it done and then its spent in this fiscal year. If the weather changes and we’re not able to do that, then we would have to put it off until the spring and then that’s something that they’ll have to decide.

President Abell: Any other comments or questions? We need a motion – I’m sorry, go ahead, Mr. Raben.

Councilmember Raben: Just so I understand the last paragraph on page one, the city will pay the vendor for the asphalt?

Mike Duckworth: Yes, that’s right. We have no exchange of dollars or funding with the vendor whatsoever on this particular project. We didn’t want to confuse it with what we pay the different vendors that we use and we’ll probably be using a city/county vendor.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, you know, I think this is good in a sense that we have equipment this time of year sitting idle and I think sharing equipment back and forth is good for the city, its good for the county and I don’t really see any problems to fight this one. So –

Mike Duckworth: Well, the problems have been going through the formulas and identifying and cost coding the different services as far as our labor and our depreciation of equipment and those kind of things and I’ll get that information to all of you in regards to how we figured this particular number and show you how we worked that out.

Councilmember Leader: I’d just like to comment, after we’ve concluded this, I would like to have, even after, it would be interesting to have a summary of how you thought it all worked.

Mike Duckworth: I’d be glad to do that. And, you know, during the tornado, we worked very closely together to help folks and, you know, to me, this is another part of helping with public safety and we have some interlocal agreements already with the city in regards to snow removal. We do some of their roads, they do some of ours, because it really doesn’t make any sense to pull the blade up just because there is a line there when we’ve got people on this side of the city and county at that line, and they’re over here on this line, so we’ve worked all that out and its worked very well.

President Abell: Any other questions or comments? I’ll entertain a motion to accept this inter-department agreement.

President Abell: Mr. Duckworth, I appreciate your work on this and like seeing the city and the county cooperate on getting these things done.

Mike Duckworth: Thank you. I do need, I think, a signature from you, President Abell, in regards to this agreement that I could forward to them.

President Abell: I’ll get it to you. Thanks. Before we have, we have a presentation Mr. Sutton had approached me about and I’ll let him introduce the presentation in just a second, but I do want to remind you as I discussed with you last week, Saturday morning, it is, as I understand it, 9:00, not 9:30, is meet the legislators at the Browning Room of the Central Library. It may be a good opportunity to discuss with them what their thoughts and feelings and ideas are on this property tax situation. At 10:00 Monday morning at USI in Carter Hall, there will be people from Indianapolis here to try to explain to us what their feelings are on this tax situation and I would certainly encourage as many of us as possible to go to that because we are going to have this facing us and we need to have all the information. And Mr. Raben and Ms. Leader, again, are heading up the committee to look at that and I appreciate your work on that, both of you. Is there any other business to come before the Council? Then, Mr. Sutton, would you like to introduce your guests?

Councilmember Sutton: Thank you, President Abell. Oftentimes we do get a rare opportunity to get some organizations that are very effective in what they do out in the community coming before us, talking about what they do and was approached here recently by a group called Partners In Caring. If you’re not familiar with Partners In Caring, it’s a coalition of several non-profit organizations here in the community that are focused upon the needs of low income and a variety of other folks, and they address key community issues as a coalition, rather than one organization, one non-profit trying to handle the issue all by themselves, but the group comes together, sits down, meets regularly, and talks about how they can effectively, as a community, resolve some of the issues. And the issue that they have, wanted to discuss with us today, I’ll allow them to move forward and talk about that. Who is going to speak? You’re going to speak? Okay. Alright.

Lynn Hert: Good morning. I’m Lynn Hert from Deaconess and as Mr. Sutton said, I’m representing Partners In Caring. And Partners has actually been in existence probably about 15 years. It was started by St. Mary’s several years ago to look at issues as Mr. Sutton had mentioned. One of the issues, we think we’ve got the dental problem solved, but one of the things we want to look at now is looking at transportation, particularly for low income families. And we’re going to bring some issues to light, I hope, and talk to you a little bit about what we’ve found and what we’re doing on this issue. And principally here to ask for your suggestions on how we can approach this issue.

Sister Mary Ann Woodward: Sister Mary Ann, Partners In Caring - Aurora. What we have done is looked at the various, what we want to look at is the various bus lines within the area which is METS. What we’ve taken and looked at is also tried to find different places in the city that our people are trying to reach and many of us are working with low income or homeless. What you’re going to see on this particular area is looking at work areas where W is going to show you work areas, we’re also trying to look at those in the county area that are out of range of the METS line. We’ve also got health care, that’s coming up. That could be your hospitals, that can also be your clinics, any place that people may be going to for needing that. The next one will be colleges or universities. We’re looking at, not only USI, University of Evansville, but we’re looking at the tech center, what we haven’t put on is high schools, but that’s also a main area. And then recently, as in this past year, most of the Bureaus of Motor Vehicle have moved offsite of bus lines. They’ve all moved to new locations. So this just gives you a general picture. You will have this in your handout, but it gives you a description of where we’re looking at. On this one we’re going to look at bus routes and the first one that’s going to come up – this is showing you some of the bus routes that are running every 30 minutes, that go from 6 a.m. in the morning to 6 p.m. These are ones that run every hour, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. These bus lines that are shown in green are going to run every 30 minutes during the day and then in the evening they will switch over to every hour. This map shows you what is available from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., either in a 30 minute interval or a 60 minute. As you can see, most of it is clustered right into the heart of the city and very little is going out to some of the work areas. Now if we look at evening routes, which is something that has been added by METS in the last couple of years, we look at routes that are now going every 60 minutes. So the green ones will come back up because they were there before. Two of the other routes are going to combine so that you have a north and south one and then you’re going to have an east and west one that’s also combining. So your First Avenue and, you know, Mary Street are going together and Tekoppel and Howell will be going together. Those routes are there but they’re every 60 minutes, and if you look at them, most of them are going to be into a loop. So if you got on at one place, you could be on the bus for over an hour. And these just go until midnight. There is nothing after 12 midnight, so people that are working second shift, either trying to get to second shift or get home need to find alternate transportation. Thank you.

Emily Baxter: Good morning, I’m Emily Baxter, also with Partners In Caring. And these are just some of the issues that we were faced with right now due to some of our transportation barriers. 2-1-1 is a local information referral line that United Way has located in their office. The call volume is very high for people who cannot get to employment and, you know, maybe get their kids to daycare, things like that. The impact on families, of course, is great. When parents can’t work, they can’t provide for their families. We did have an instance that an individual did die from the lack of medical transportation, which involved a METS bus picking them up on time. You know, a tragic event, but it did happen. And then safety issues, Goodwill Family Center, you all may be familiar with that center, its out on Buena Vista and, I think, on Kratzville Road, out in that area, they did have a bus that would come directly in front of that shelter to pick up clients, but when they had some construction going on, they rerouted the bus line and never brought it back to the original destination and so those clients have to walk down a long hill to catch the bus with strollers, with baby carts, things like that, so safety is very, very much a priority at that location. And as Sister had mentioned earlier, there is no Sunday transportation. A lot of our clients do work on Sundays, so these are in a nutshell just some of the things that are happening right now that our clients are faced with every day.

Sister Mary Ann Woodward: The first one was a study that was done through the city looking at METS and transportation. This one is looking at Destination Home; one of the key barriers that was recognized in this was transportation. This is just showing what Warrick County has started to do. They’re using the Ride Solution. This is comparing some cities that are of local size to us and how many of them, this is going to show how many have Sunday transportation compared to us and the cities are Dayton, Grand Rapids, Lexington, Akron and Lansing, Michigan. This just showed the same study but looking at the frequency of bus routes.

Lynn Hert: And so what Partner’s history, what we always do is try to look at and develop a concept paper that looks at how we feel like we need to proceed in this issue and one of the issues that we believe is that METS needs to implement a study to look at their current routes and hours. And the last study was actually done in 1998 and we know the area has changed considerably. We also believe its important for employers to look at this issue in terms of people losing jobs and not being able to be employed because of transportation issues. And also, talking with the city and county officials to look at sidewalks and trails that have helped community residents to be able to walk to work and to get to school and to other services. I think what I’d also like to do now is to tell you where we’ve come in terms of looking at this issue. One of the first things Sister mentioned is we spoke with the mayor at the Destination Home committee and we’ve also met with the transportation committee of the Chamber of Commerce. They had advised us to actually contact Senator Becker in regards to, I guess she is serving on the state committee looking at mass transit, which we did, and she was very supportive of the issue. Unfortunately, no money for a feasibility study for METS, but was very supportive. She was particularly concerned by the fact that, I’m sure you’re aware that the evening GED classes that many of our clients go to when they are employed during the day, there’s no transportation now there in the evening to the career and technical center. Also, about a week ago we held a meeting with the city of Evansville staff to look at the METS issues. And what we’re going to be doing in terms of that is pulling out the old study. Mr. Cutchin, I believe is his name, will be looking at the old study. And what we’ve done is arranged to work with USI to do a study utilizing their students that will hopefully replicate the study that cost around $125,000 in 1998, to be able to gather some information in terms of that. Also, what we’ve done is, in working with the Chamber, we have put together a list of employers that many of our clients are employed by, for example, AmeriQual, T. J. Maxx, Azteca is one of the other ones. And what the Chamber has agreed to do is to meet or communicate with those particular HR departments to see the impact to transportation. And the other thing, we’re actually, all of our partners’ members have a responsibility, they’re actually meeting with their individual boards to discuss this issue. And you have in front of you, obviously, a copy of this presentation in addition to some strategies and some information. The reason we’ve come to you today is to ask you for any additional thoughts, any additional assistance or any direction that we need to go in, we’re open to suggestions.

Councilmember Winnecke: Thank you, Madam President. Lynn, did you talk about, are you able to quantify how many people are –

Lynn Hert: Yes, that’s a really hard thing to know. We hope that we will be addressing that through the feasibility study. One of the things I didn’t mention that part of us will be working on, particularly as it relates to medical transportation, we have, Rob Schaefer from the MPO is meeting with us in regards to a grant that’s available. We’re actually working with a local provider of medical transportation to help us to write a grant to get a new van to help with medical assistance. And I bring that up to you because she tells us that she’s actually turning away about 125 people a month who are in need of medical transportation. So as far as ridership, missing ridership, we don’t know. And I think one of the things that’s kind of interesting, we’re not the same kind of city in terms of transportation. We need to look at ridership and kind of be reasonable in looking at that. Are we all going to eventually ride the city bus? I don’t know. Certainly, the city is interested in increasing ridership because increasing ridership may change the routes, may increase funding. It all comes down to money, which I certainly heard you talking about that today, so no, I don’t have any idea about that. I know a lot of our patients have difficulty in getting to appointments. When you think about being a single mother and getting to McDonald’s and having two kids to drop off to daycare before you get to McDonalds to work a four hour shift, it gets a little challenging.

Councilmember Winnecke: I think it would be helpful as the research is done, for this body to know how many workers at Azteca or as an example, outside of the city limits, that are missing, that have no transportation where we could sit down. It would be difficult, I think, for us to sit down with the city and examine funding a route in that direction, as an example, if we don’t know how many people would actually use it. So I think the research is a logical next step.

Lynn Hert: And we can certainly come back to you after we talk to the transportation group. Let me also, and I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but many of those employers that are mentioned do not employ through their own HR, they’re employed through the temporary services, so its pretty much a revolving door of folks that are coming in and around, and so we’re not real hopeful about getting information, but we’re willing to take that step. And I guess what I’m saying is we’re trying to go forward and meeting with those temporary agencies that are employing people. So that would be one great suggestion. Any other suggestions or direction? Yes?

Councilmember Leader: I just wanted to comment. First of all on the USI feasibility study, I’m aware of the people who are now in charge of those studies and they come from the private sector originally and have a great background and you’ll probably get a $250,000 –

Councilmember Leader: -- study at no cost, because they’re doing some amazing things. Secondly, I wanted to ask Sister if we could get copies of the slides that had the studies on them. We did not have those in our packet. We’d appreciate that. Thank you.

Councilmember Raben: You know, one thing, and this would really involve the County Commissioners, but within their budget, if you recall, its what, $125,000, $150,000, there’s a line where we pay a private contractor to transport handicapped and elderly individuals. I think that that’s what METS Mobility does is the very same thing. So that’s something to look at, maybe whether there is a need for two individual services and when you said METS is turning away 120 people –

Councilmember Raben: -- okay, excuse me. I don’t really know the contractor that the county is using today, I don’t know that there’s a situation that they’re turning away people. So there may be some room for people to utilize the other service or maybe we don’t need two services, maybe – and how we ever got to two, I don’t know. But there’s a lot of money there that could possibly be worked in to just one effort.

Councilmember Sutton: Yeah, I think, too, Lynn, as we have tried to do the best that we could as a body to attract new business to our county and we’ve had some degree of success, you know, most of the businesses and industry that we deal with tend to locate on the perimeters of the county, you know, in our industrial park and so forth. And that’s probably something, maybe we need to give some thought to when we have discussions with those companies in talking about transportation issues and how much interest they may have in sharing some of those concerns because some of the pay levels of some of the workers would clearly put them at a level where transportation might be a challenge for some of their workforce. So maybe that’s something for us that we need to give some consideration to as we work through economic development issues like that.

Lynn Hert: And that’s exactly why we’ve come here today is to kind of make you aware of these of issues and just so that you use that information going forward. But we’ll certainly be willing to come back and give you this, when we get the report back from the Chamber.

Councilmember Sutton: Is there anything else? I mean, we’ve had some discussions, too, about even the possibility of grants that could be written by the county, I’m sure the city is doing all that they can on their end, if there’s any possibilities on the federal or state side that we might be overlooking as a county to help address some of these gaps that you indicated on the map there that clearly would be something that we might be able to help to facilitate something like that?

Lynn Hert: That would be awesome. And we have agreed to start looking for some grants from METS to help them as well. This is not an adversarial relationship. We realize that METS is doing the best that they can with the money. But we do want to help them and that would be a great thing if you could let us know if there’s anything we should apply for, we’d be willing to help.

Councilmember Sutton: Approximately, you know, I guess, it was about six or seven years ago I worked with one of the local employers here who at that time was just off one of the bus lines, were able to work with them and they were more than happy, receptive, to work with METS, the city, and so forth to get that route redesigned so that then they could add that route to – and it was really helpful for them.

Lynn Hert: And I think that’s one of the things that we thought about, too, is maybe collaborating between T. J. Maxx and AmeriQual, maybe having, if AmeriQual would be willing to support a van that at certain times of the day would pick folks up from T. J. Maxx and take them to AmeriQual. You know, kind of thinking outside of the box. So thank you for your time and –

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, I didn’t know if you looked at the Community Corrections area at all. We end up with literally, I don’t know, well over 100 people, I guess, every day that are leaving the work release type program and going out to First Avenue or other places at the fast food joints to work and stuff, and many of those people are on foot. And walking through the neighborhoods and stuff, so to me it’s a dual purpose there, not only to get them to a job but to secure those neighborhoods and stuff because they’re cutting through houses, I mean, yards and that whole business.

Councilmember Shetler: I don’t know. I guess maybe start with the Sheriff, perhaps. But I know that’s been a real issue to deal with, changing that whole environment of where the work release was to where it is now, its had to change everybody’s work patterns and everything else.

President Abell: Any other questions or comments? I just have one when you’re talking to the Commissioners you might ask them if they have any money left over in their Welfare to Work fund, that might be another area that you can tap. I know at one time they kept complaining that they weren’t being able to spend all of it and nobody was applying and then they tell me they were spending it all and people were waiting in line. I certainly wouldn’t want to take away from somebody who needs the money, but if there is money laying around that they’re not using, you certainly might want to ask them about that.

President Abell: Anyone else? Thank you. You do have something on your desks that tells you the County Commissioners are going to have a meeting next Tuesday to talk about closing Green River Road. That’s a pretty strong issue, you may want to attend that meeting. And make note, our next Council meeting is a week from today, okay? We are adjourned.

(There being no further business to come before the Council, the meeting was adjourned at 9:40 a.m.)

1050-1210	College Incentive	600.00
1050-1301	Civilian Overtime	2,500.00
Total		3,100.00

1051-1850	Union Overtime	5,000.00	0.00
Total		5,000.00	0.00

1220-2600	Office Supplies	600.00	600.00
1220-3410	Printing	531.00	531.00
Total		1,131.00	1,131.00

2490-1150-3540	Maintenance Contract	772.00	772.00
Total		772.00	772.00

3660-4196	Facility Improvement	374,000.00	374,000.00
Total		374,000.00	374,000.00

From: 1210-2280	Precinct Meals	4,300.00	4,300.00
1210-2700	Other Supplies	2,000.00	2,000.00
1210-3410	Printing	2,000.00	2,000.00
To: 1210-1120-1210	Election Assistant	8,300.00	8,300.00

From: 1370-3941	Guardian Ad-Litem	3,000.00	3,000.00
1370-1311-1370	Bailiff/Trans-Officer	442.00	442.00
To: 1370-3980	Trans. Child & Misc.	3,000.00	3,000.00
1370-1370-1370	Bailiff	442.00	442.00

2030-4410	St. Joe Ave. Bridge #1921	200,000.00	200,000.00
2030-4418	St. Joe Ave. Bridge #1924	15,000.00	15,000.00
2030-4419	Bromm Road Culvert #1338	10,000.00	10,000.00
2030-4421	Boonville-New Harmony Culvert #192	49,000.00	49,000.00
To: 2030-4373	First Avenue Bridge #111	738,000.00	738,000.00

From: 2861-3130	Travel/Mileage	862.00	862.00
2861-3310	Training	305.00	305.00
2861-3370	Computer (Data Mgmt)	970.00	970.00
To: 2861-3210	Emergency Mgmt.	2,137.00	2,137.00

From: 1480-1920	Insurance	6,309.00	6,309.00
To: 1480-1971	Accrued Payments	5,514.00	5,514.00
1480-1900	FICA	422.00	422.00
1480-1910	PERF	373.00	373.00

From: 2030-1150-2030	Laborer	4,272.00	4,272.00
To: 2030-1971	Accrued Payments	3,638.00	3,638.00
2030-1910	PERF	355.00	355.00
2030-1900	FICA	279.00	279.00

From: 1090-3530	Contractual Services	13,000.00	13,000.00
To: 1090-2700	Other Supplies	5,000.00	5,000.00
1090-4220	Office Machines	3,000.00	3,000.00
1090-2600	Office Supplies	5,000.00	5,000.00

From: 2490-1090-3540	Maintenance Contract	1,600.00	1,600.00
2490-1090-3130	Travel/Mileage	250.00	250.00
To: 2490-1090-3530	Contractual Services	800.00	800.00
2490-1090-2600	Office Supplies	800.00	800.00
2490-1090-2700	Other Supplies	250.00	250.00