The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 3^rd day of June 2009 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 8:34 a.m. by County Council President Tom Shetler, Jr.

President Shetler: Okay, good morning. Today is June the 3^rd. I’d like to welcome you to the Vanderburgh County Council meeting this morning. I’d like at this time to call for the roll call please.

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

President Shetler: There being six present and one absent, we have a quorum. I’d like to ask Councilman Sutton to please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

President Shetler: Next is the approval of the minutes of the May 5^th meeting. Everybody should have received a copy. Anybody have any questions? Motion will be in order for approval.

President Shetler: Yes. There being five ayes and one abstention, the motion carries.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, good morning. Thank you, Mr. President. First on the agenda under the Sheriff is Shift Differential in the amount of $1,500. With that is also a request under Community Corrections, Extra Help and FICA for $10,610. I’ll move approval for both items.

President Shetler: We have a motion and a second. Any questions? Discussion? Roll call please.

Councilmember Raben: Next, under County Council, Consultant in the amount of $25,000, I’ll move approval – $25,500, excuse me.

President Shetler: There are some changes that have been made by our attorney on that contract so maybe Mr. Ahlers needs to --

Jeff Ahlers: Yeah, I just needed a clarification. I assume that your motion is just an appropriation and then I guess later under new business we’ll address the contract, is that what we’re going to do?

Jeff Ahlers: I mean, in other words, this motion is not approving the contract. You’re just appropriating the money, right?

President Shetler: That’s fine. That makes sense. Okay, so we have a motion and a second on the floor on the appropriation. Any questions, discussion? Roll call please.

Councilmember Raben: Next, under Coroner for a new minivan for transporting persons in the amount of $24,000. I’ll move approval.

President Shetler: I guess in discussion, I’d bring it up and I brought it up the last time, and Ms. Groves was not here, but I, again, have a little bit of an issue myself because of maybe not going through the purchasing department. I don’t know if there’s other opportunities out there for us to piggyback on the state. I know that we’ve spoken to two different vendors and I got the rationale on just those exclusive vendors, but I would rather see us go through the purchasing department, use our standard process that we have so that we don’t begin a new process here where department heads and officeholders are just randomly going out and contacting whomever. So that’s my only –

Annie Groves: There was no bids on a state list for minivans, so that’s why...I looked into it, but there was no –

President Shetler: Yeah, I received your letter and I didn’t fully understand that, but are you saying there were no recent bids or were you saying that when they –

Annie Groves: In 2009 when I tried to look at the state bid list, they didn’t have any minivans bid.

President Shetler: I don’t know -- because a couple things I’ve been involved in, in the past, I know they have piggybacked on that. Is there a contact person with the state or that can tell us exactly what’s available to us and not available to us on that?

Annie Groves: To be real honest, I always go through Sheriff Williams. He’s the one that gets me all the lists and stuff. He stays up on all that. But he was the one, you know, I worked with him and we called the Sheriff’s department and there was no bids. And I don’t know who the contact person is. I know that our purchasing department also said that we didn’t have, you know, they looked it up for me, too, and we didn’t have any minivans there.

President Shetler: I guess I’m not opposed to the amount of money, I’m not opposed to the fact that you need a van. Making sure that we do the process correctly so that we don’t set, you know, a new precedent, that’s where I’m coming from.

Councilmember Bassemier: Mr. President, just for the record, I did check with Annie to prepare for this information she’s given you. Royce, you asked me also if she checked into a pool and I think she’s checked into that, too. And I just wanted to let you know, I did my job. That’s all I have.

Annie Groves: I called them and asked them if there was anything on the state list. And I’m willing to take your guidance, but when I was told, I was just told to go get price checks on all this stuff. You know, no one told me that I needed to go through anything else. The Commissioners said, you know, you need to price check this and that’s what I did.

Annie Groves: I am just now working with purchasing on other areas of the building, you know, because that came up last night by the county attorney.

Councilmember Goebel: We can put the money in place, regardless, is that correct?

President Shetler: We can certainly do that. I don’t know if that would prevent someone to go out and purchase it, you know, without abiding by our guidance unless we kind of make sure those things are in line first, and I guess that’s where my reluctance would be a little bit now.

Councilmember Raben: I mean, we can get Annie on the record this morning stating that she’ll take it through purchasing.

President Shetler: Right, and then they’ll develop bid specifications and that way we have -- all dealers have an opportunity to place a bid on this.

President Shetler: They’re all hungry, I think, right now. And I think they all would like to have an opportunity on that.

Annie Groves: There is only two dealers in Vanderburgh County that have USA products, so no one else carries a minivan.

President Shetler: Your letter indicated that, but I was a little bit, I guess, skeptical of that from the standpoint that, I mean, Princeton is making a minivan, which is a Toyota product, which is owned by a foreign country, but by the same token it’s produced right here. So I didn’t know what –

Annie Groves: Well, according to Deb Spalding when I spoke to her, she said Indiana state law says you have to buy US unless you can justify otherwise. And I don’t really think I can justify that because, you know, in my opinion, the minivan is just the minivan. So, you know, I’m willing to work with her, but this is what she did tell me, that you have to buy, per state law, in the US first, US products first.

Councilmember Kiefer: Just a couple questions and thoughts. This wasn’t originally what I was going to ask but since Tom brought it up, there are a lot of people that are employed at Toyota and I do know that we do like to keep our local people working, so that would be maybe an extraordinary consideration for Toyota just because we have people here in Evansville that work there. And they pay taxes here in Evansville. But anyway, I know you’ll look into that and do what’s right on that. Just out of curiosity, has there ever been any consideration for a previously owned vehicle? I mean, sometimes you can get huge discounts with a vehicle that might only have 10,000 miles on it or 6,000 miles. It’s been a dealer car or vehicle or something. I would think that we might be able to get some kind of discount for something like that. But I didn’t know because you might have special needs where it has to be equipped a certain way as well.

Annie Groves: I’m to the point now, I would like to have something that we don’t have to have towed from the scene like we had to a few weeks ago. So that’s where I’m at.

President Shetler: Alright, thank you. I guess what I would be looking for is some kind of commitment that we at least go through the purchasing, that they develop bids and specifications and that it goes through a bidding process like we do on most other capital projects. That way, if they need to specify in there that it has to be American made, I’m not qualified to determine what is American made because I know sometimes there is 80% of the parts are made in America, it’s assembled in Canada, it’s not American made. But other times, 80% of the parts are made in Mexico or Canada, and it’s assembled here in the United States and it’s now one of ours. I don’t know what qualifies what. But they’ll know that and they can put the bid specs together so that everyone does have a fair chance to bid on an American product that meets specifications then.

Annie Groves: Can I ask a question then on another matter? Because I went out and got price checks also for the building on roofs and stuff because I had been led to believe the only thing I needed to do is go get three price checks. So do you also want me to give you all that information and you put all that out for bid, too, for the building, for the roof and the gutters and everything?

President Shetler: I personally think it’s always a prudent thing to do to make sure that the taxpayers are guarded by that so that it’s not just hand selected to a particular vendor. But, I mean, that’s my own personal opinion.

Annie Groves: I really haven’t gotten a lot of guidance in this area, so I would appreciate it if I could get some kind of –

President Shetler: Yeah, the Commissioners will deal with that. That’s really more –

President Shetler: Yes. Any other questions? Okay, we have a motion on the floor and a –

President Shetler: And a second. I’m making the one stipulation on that, but I mean, that’s my own personal feeling. I don’t know if we would need to make an amendment to that if anybody is interested in amending that to include that that goes through purchasing, or if you’re agreeing to do that?

Councilmember Lloyd: I mean, that just means there’s a possibility that we would spend less than $24,000. I mean, it just depends on how the bids come in or –

Councilmember Bassemier: Excuse me, Annie, would you explain that you put in a little bit extra for the –

Annie Groves: Yeah, we do need a little bit extra, you know, because we have to equip the back of it, so if we have any spills, you know, that we can easily clean it up. The Commissioners have also said that we need to have our logo on it, so that’s an extra expense. So there is going to be a few extra expenses.

Councilmember Bassemier: I looked at her vehicle that they’re driving now and it’s in pretty bad shape. It’s rusted on the top and it is kind of embarrassing, especially when it won’t start when you’re getting ready to drive away with a person.

Councilmember Kiefer: Annie, would you mind reporting back to us what you end up with just out of curiosity since we talked about all this? You know, I’d be curious to know what vehicle ultimately you end up with and how much you spend on it.

President Shetler: Yes. There being seven ayes and no nays, the motion carries. Thank you.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, next under County Assessor, Contractual Services in the amount of $8,822, and Maintenance Contract in the amount of $700, for a total of $9,522, I’ll move approval.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, next under Jail Project. We have a request in the amount of, it’s for Facility Improvements, the request was for $340,750. I’m going to make a motion to begin discussion in the amount of $152,000.

President Shetler: It’s been moved and seconded. Questions? Comments? Yes, Councilman Lloyd?

Councilmember Lloyd: Well, this is the high priority items that the Sheriff and Mr. Rector had brought before us, so that total was approximately $151,050, and so Councilman Raben rounded it up to $152,000. I would like to commend Mr. Rector for giving us the information, where the – what funds the Building Authority has related to the jail project. In fact, he gave us the history all the way back to when the bonds were issued, which was nice, he had a lot of detail there. But the total out of the $340,000, maybe there’s other items that either the Building Authority would look at purchasing out of those funds or make do without them. But anyway, I think we had a pretty detailed discussion with the Sheriff on the items that would really be high priority and also would assist them in saving time on some of these things. So we all received that detailed letter from the Sheriff if there’s any questions on that. But I think this would turn out to be a good compromise.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, I’d like to address one of my new concerns as of just this morning. I got my hands on the actual agreement with the Building Authority and the county that was established back in May of ‘04. And in this agreement it specifically refers to a lot of these items. You know, just to give a little more detail, the county, every year, puts $100,000 in addition to your rent that is to establish a reserve for making repairs to the facility. In fact, we’re, by contract, we have to do that through year 2015 unless the fund develops a million dollars. Currently, there is $727,500 in that depreciation reserve. So I guess I’m bringing this to everyone’s attention because a lot of these items, I think, after reviewing this contract, should have come out of those reserves. And secondly, we do, at some point in time, we want to be cautious moving forward because we don’t want to extend beyond the million dollars that we’re responsible for. I mean, you know, if you talk 2015, that’s six more – well, five more budget years. So, we can get beyond our cap that we’re responsible for but, again, I guess, Dave, and I apologize just getting this, this morning, I haven’t had an opportunity to talk to you specifically on the contractual side of it, but one of the big ones on here is the chillers in the amount of, I think those are $30,000. Item A addresses just that as being responsible – it would be on page 5, that the depreciation reserves should be picking up that portion. So I didn’t know if you could address some of this or not. As I look through this list, Dave, I see many of these items that we’re coming to for General fund money, that fall in all these categories. So, I apologize for kind of putting you on the spot here --

Dave Rector: It’s not a problem. Good morning, Dave Rector, Building Authority. The maintenance agreement you refer to actually is set up for the jail and corrections. The $750,000, there’s about a half million in the jail, that would grow to a million. In Corrections, there’s about $250,000, that grows to half a million. And it’s very similar to the memorandum of understanding that we have with the Centre for the depreciation reserves that are used for major capital items: roof replacement, chiller repair, that kind of thing. My own philosophy is, I try not to touch that depreciation reserve unless we have to just – it’s there for emergencies and we’re looking, 2015 down the road, and if something happens, we’ve got to have some money to do it or else you guys are going to have to find the money to do it. So I try to be real conservative with that. The chiller repair, what happened this year is we needed to, I didn’t plan $30,000 for a three year old chiller in my operational budget. Unfortunately, it hit and we have to do it. That is an item we could go back and take out of the depreciation reserves if you all so would like to. I’m just trying to not go after that, keeping it for emergency purposes. That’s just a personal philosophy with the way that we treat depreciation reserves. And, with any of these items that you may not fund, if towards the end of the year budgetarily we’re doing okay, I’ll try to do them out of operational expenses. But I try to be as true as I can to the operation expenses because that’s what reflects back to you within our budget.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, I guess, you know, the fund is in place is how I look at it and then, you know, another item, the bench installation and painting of cells 21, 22, and 23 for $20,000, it addresses just after lawn care services, painting and replacement of fixed equipment and fixtures. So, you know, I guess I’m kind of looking at it as we’ve already spent our $100,000 annually and we’re developing this fund to pick up most of these items. I don’t know why we would further fund and continue to grow that other one when in fact we’re obligated through 2015 to put $100,000 annually in there. So I would, and I understand, you know, a lot of this there is a great need for, but if we want to take time this morning, I would recommend that we pick and choose what may or may not fall in these categories and appropriate General fund monies for those and lean on the Building Authority to pick up the balance under the reserves.

Dave Rector: And I’d appreciate some feedback from all of you, do you agree or disagree with the way we try to treat depreciation reserves. As I said, I try to hold that pretty close for a major expenditure that may hit to replace instead of just doing these 30, $20,000 kind of things.

Councilmember Goebel: Well, I don’t know about the regular maintenance, the painting and things like that, but, to me, the chillers, that’s something of an emergency and maybe that’s what this fund is for, but I understand your point, too, you’re trying to protect for a severe or high end emergency. These funds are coming from, if we appropriate today, what source?

Councilmember Raben: It’s basically a General fund account. It’s our Jail set aside, which is kind of tagged with that name, but for all practical purposes, it’s purely General fund monies. So it’s – and that’s the other thing, too, you know, we’ve got a little over 2.5 million dollars in that account today. But we also need our own reserves for the other 60 budgets that we’re responsible for should we have any travesties within any other workings of government. So we need to be careful and treat it as what it is, it is a reserve account. Maybe we need to fix a new name on it at budget time. Maybe, you know, I don’t like that title today, Jail set aside. I think it ought to be, I think we need to put another name on it in September, but I’d like to safeguard that for what other emergencies we have in the future.

Councilmember Kiefer: Councilman Raben, in regard to what the responsibilities are, I think this maintenance agreement spells it out pretty clearly, it says, “The Building Authority agrees to maintain the new county jail (except maintenance of security electronics system and related equipment, telecommunication systems, data network, parking lot snow removal, cleaning of inmate and kitchen areas and those items specifically excluded by the county).” So I think it pretty much says that, you know, they do everything except those things. But, Dave, to your concern, I think you’re also protected as well because this agreement goes on to say, “The county shall provide the Building Authority with a reasonable working balance to fund the Building Authority’s responsibilities hereunder.” So the way I’m viewing it is, even if you utilize your monies that you have available, you’re still protected because, by this contract, we’re not going to let you just go without monies to take care of it. And I guess another way to do this, this is all taxpayer dollars no matter how you shake it out, whether it comes from this fund or that fund, it’s all taxpayer dollars. So I’m glad that we’ve gone through the exercise to determine which items are the most urgent ones and most prudent ones to take care of first. But I’d feel comfortable allowing Dave to pay for this stuff out of the Building Authority because it says that in the agreement, and then if there is a situation where he needs more money, well then, we’ll have to address that because that’s also our responsibility to make sure he’s got enough reserve or enough funds to operate.

Dave Rector: Again, it’s a personal thing, but when I give you my budget each year, I intend to live by that and I don’t think that I’m one that I can come back and ask for an additional appropriation. I’ve told you what I think we can operate under and that’s what I try to do. This year we’re going to reduce it again. This will be the fourth year out of six years we’ve reduced the budget to the city and county. I’m cognizant of doing that. When I tell you that, though, I intend to live by that budget and I would be embarrassed to come back and say, oh, I’ve blown it, I need another $50,000. Not to say that won’t ever happen, but I really try not –

Councilmember Kiefer: Dave, you do a great job and really, honestly, these things, like Councilman Goebel said, they seem to be somewhat of an emergency, unexpected. I mean, I don’t think you would have dreamt it or we would have dreamt that boiler system would have had a problem. You know, so I would not be one here at all that would say, you know, there was some error on your part because there wasn’t. I mean, this is just probably more of an error on the architect or engineer’s part by not specifying better equipment and getting us a warranty that was a little bit better.

President Shetler: When you’re putting together the budget and assessing the rent, according to the expenses that, I guess, you’re figuring in there, when you go back against – if something happens like with on a clearly county piece of property that you’re responsible for, does that go into the whole pool where it’s divided among all of the tenants or does it go into like the county specifically?

Dave Rector: If it’s for the Civic Center, it’s spread across city and county. If it’s for the Jail only, that obviously is just a county funded facility, so it would just be county. But if it happens here, it’s spread across everything.

President Shetler: So the county, in your accounting method that you’re using, the Jail is a separate item totally and doesn’t go into –

Dave Rector: Yes, you see a whole separate line item for the Jail and each of those budgetary items, by line item on what we expect our expenses to be for the next year.

President Shetler: When you are developing that budget, do you try to maintain a certain amount of reserves for the maintenance then, over and above the $100,000 that we’re actually putting back in depreciation?

Dave Rector: We have a line item for maintenance repairs, that kind of thing, that we expect to incur on a routine basis throughout the year, preventive maintenance on just the air handling units, changing filters, belts, that kind of thing, constantly repairing toilets. Inmates are notoriously hard on the toilets out there and repairing those. So just daily kind of maintenance kind of things, that’s what our line item is for, is just repairs and maintenance. There’s grounds expense, there’s –

President Shetler: Okay, and then you’ve got the $100,000 that we’re setting aside, so basically, you could say $180,000 of a total budget.

Dave Rector: But as discussed, I’ve not touched the depreciation reserves for the jail since we started it.

President Shetler: Right. And the – if that hundred were somehow incorporated along with the 80, that would just mean that the rent itself would go up?

Councilmember Raben: One last comment, Dave. And I want to echo a lot of what Joe said, thanks for what you do, and you are doing a great job, and certainly I apologize for putting you in the hot seat today.

Councilmember Raben: But looking at this, if we pull the items that appear to be part of our contractual agreement within the facility and the Building Authority, David, I’m kind of going through this. Initially, what the thought was, with $152,000, for now was, taking all of what Sheriff Williams had considered as high priority and then some other items that weren’t as high but were essentials that he really needed. And I’m looking at, on the first page of what he provided to us, and I don’t think you have this and maybe you do.

Councilmember Lloyd: That’s the letter from Sheriff Williams dated April 27^th?

Councilmember Raben: Here’s a copy, Dave. Yeah, take that with you and I’ll – the fifth from the bottom item is install water supply for garden hose in booking plumbing chases. You know, I would think that that would fall under plumbing.

Dave Rector: What that is, that’s an additional installation, it was not designed into the Jail. Let me see how we can say this on T.V...well, when inebriated inmates come in, they don’t always contain themselves, and it’s to hose the area down. And right now, they’re carrying buckets back there to try to mop it up.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, and I would think that that could fall under the plumbing side of it. Of course, the repair chiller, we’ve already addressed that. The roof access ladders, that’s to get up and actually do maintenance and what have you, right?

Dave Rector: We have a roof access ladder now that is in the design of the original building that, to access the roof, you go up to the second floor mezzanine, down a hallway, into a mechanical room, climb up on to the roof, the roof hatch is actually installed backwards and it’s really very difficult access to a roof for maintenance purposes. What this would do is, we’re going to go over to the Corrections, put a roof access ladder up on the single story unit that will get us up on to the roofs and we can get around from there.

Councilmember Raben: And I did skip over one: the very bottom item on the first page, ladders for second level chase platforms.

Dave Rector: What that is, we added, the Jail has evolved as we’ve been there, with concerns we had going into there. You have two-story chases that are about ten foot wide, four foot deep that all the plumbing is in these chases and on the second levels of the mezzanines where inmates are held, where all the plumbing for the toilets are that get stopped up, we had no way of getting into those. So at first we started and we cut access ports into those. To get into those, then, we had to set extension ladders up to try to crawl over into that, which was not safe so we put platforms that side of it. Now to get to those platforms, we have to use extension ladders. But if it’s muddy, if it’s icy, if it’s snowy and you’re carrying equipment up in a tool belt, so this would have some permanent ladders to get up to those platforms.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. What those items that I just cited that we’ve just discussed, amount to $80,000 on the button and what I would recommend is that $80,000 for those specific items come out of the depreciation reserve fund. And then what my recommendation is going to be is to set in about $50,000 for the Sheriff to – or no, set in $72,000 for the Sheriff to then go in and the other items that really aren’t part of the physical structure or – and this is precursive because, you know, kind of adjusting this on the fly, but that would allow him to make the other high priority and some of the lower priority items that he really feels like he needs. So what I would like to do, Mr. President, if I can, is amend my motion to set that Facility Improvements in at $72,000.

Dave Rector: Not to speak for the Sheriff, but I do know there are some things on here, security-wise that he really would like to do.

Councilmember Raben: And if you don’t mind, I’ll run through that so you’d know, if you like if you want to check those off. In fact, Dave, the copy that I gave you, they’re already highlighted. So you’ll just need to, the items –

Councilmember Raben: That was part of the original $150,000 motion before the adjusted figure. So just to give you an idea so you understand what part that we’re saying that you need to spend of the reserves, install water supply for $2,500, the last item, the ladders for the second level, on the next page, repair chiller and then the roof access ladders. We’re approving everything else that’s highlighted outside of those four items, okay?

President Shetler: Okay, so the motion is to basically appropriate $72,000 as opposed to the 340,750, and then directing to take $80,000 out of the depreciation for the other items that are highlighted, and then the other items, no recommendation.

Councilmember Raben: No recommendation. We can circle the wagons and look at those at budget time or whatever. But these items I think carried the highest priority with the Sheriff. In fact, I mean, he made this list, so –

Dave Rector: It’s doable. As I said to start out with, I’ll have to go back to the depreciation reserves and I’m okay with that, it’s just, I try to build that up if we have a major catastrophe that’s going to cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars that we have that. Knowing that if that happens, I can come back to you and ask for it, I just don’t like to have to do that. I like to be able to take care of what you’ve given me with what we have. So yes, we can do it.

Councilmember Raben: You know, again, I’m treating the two, because it is one in the same, the Corrections and the Jail, taking 80 out of that is still going to allow you, you’ll still have like, 640 something thousand dollars within that fund. And we’re going to put another $100,000 in it again in September.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, I’ll amend my motion to include the document provided by Sheriff Williams to be entered into the minutes. The date on this document is April 30^th, 2009.

Councilman Sutton: Can you specify which document it is because we also receive that?

Councilmember Raben: Everyone was given a copy of this but it’s from the Sheriff of Vanderburgh County, it addresses the County Councilmembers and it references Sheriff’s Council request for May 2009 follow up information. It goes on to say, “During your meeting last week,” referring to our April meeting, “members of the Council asked a few questions about my request that I was unable to completely answer at the time. Please find the responses to those questions below.” And it goes on to say that, “You requested that I prioritize projects that were submitted for the jail. Building Authority Superintendent Dave Rector and I met and assigned the listed priorities for these projects.” So it’s again, it was the total $340,000 kind of, the list of those items, prioritized and that’s it in a nutshell.

Councilman Sutton: He was making it as an amendment to his motion, I don’t know if the seconder also agreed to the amendment.

Councilman Sutton: The process that you follow to draw down on the depreciation reserve, how does that work?

Dave Rector: Right now those funds may not be readily available because it is so much money. We try to invest those in CD’s that might get a good interest. Not anymore. But they’re invested in CD’s to try to get the best interest rate as we can and then when it becomes available, I’ll have to take it out of there and put it into our operational budget.

Councilman Sutton: So that process for you, you don’t have to go through your board to get an additional approval, and so the process, timewise, takes approximately how long?

Dave Rector: According to when those CD’s are due. I’m not sure. We have them invested, we have the Civic Center depreciation reserves, the Centre, the Jail’s so we bid that out to all the banks and whichever one gives us the best rate.

Dave Rector: No, I won’t draw it out and do that. We’ll handle it within the budget until I can get it out of there.

Dave Rector: I think James’ suggestion maybe to change the title of this line item probably is a good one and I think that’s what started some of this was just the misnomer of jail set aside. We thought that’s what it was for, jail expenses, until Mr. Fluty said no, it’s really General fund. And I think that’s what got some of this going is we thought we had some money here to make these improvements.

President Shetler: Alright, thank you. So boiling it down again, we’re basically talking about a $72,000 appropriation as far as this ordinance is concerned. Any questions? Roll – Councilman Kiefer?

Councilmember Kiefer: I just wanted to make sure I understand this. This $72,000 is not for what would be considered maintenance or reserve items?

Councilmember Raben: Again, a lot of this was said on the fly this morning. Some of those technically could or couldn’t be part of maintenance but I think Dave picking up the bigger items that are more relative to the structure, you know, it’s what I could pick out fairly quick here. There might be a $500 item that could or couldn’t have fallen into the other.

Councilmember Kiefer: But basically, the essence is, he’s picking up the maintenance or reserve items and we’re picking up the other stuff on the critical list from Sheriff Ellsworth – I mean, Sheriff Williams, I apologize.

Dave Rector: I have a pretty good idea of what he wants to get done with that. There’s some important security items.

Councilman Sutton: Before we move on, the other items, are you going to get with the Sheriff and kind of rework the list, come back to us at some point in time here in the next couple of months? What are you looking at on that?

Dave Rector: We can. Let us get these items completed as we’ve discussed. And then as we go into the year, as I said, I don’t object at all to try and get this done if we’re doing well within our operational budget. If not, then we’re going to have to come back and talk about it.

Councilmember Raben: Next under Legal Aid/United Way, this is a repeal from Miscellaneous in the amount of $1,028, I move approval.

President Shetler: It’s been moved and seconded. Any questions? Roll call please.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, last Mr. President, it looks like we have five transfers, I’m going to move that we accept all transfers as listed.

President Shetler: It’s been moved and seconded. Do I have any questions or comments?

Councilmember Lloyd: I talked to the County Clerk and that was a necessary transfer for the County Clerk.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, and my last business is the Amendments to the Salary Ordinance. First under Sheriff, salary line 1050-1531 Shift Differential as previously adopted. Community Corrections, 1361-1990 Extra Help as previously adopted for two part-time employees for the Drug Court program. They are to be paid at the rate of $8.00 per hour for a maximum of 20 hours a week for 52 weeks a year. County Clerk, amend salary line 1010-1260 Circuit/Superior Appeals Venue Clerk as previously approved and transferred. The position is a COMOT IV, Step 2 with an annual salary of $28,959. Cum Bridge, amend salary line 2030-1150 Laborer as previously adopted. Laborer returned to work releasing Temporary Replacement. Health Department, salary line 2130-1971 as previously adopted. This transfer is to provide funding for the Executive Director’s buyout, salary lines 2130-1240 and 2130-1430 will remain vacant. There is a balance of $1,695.24 in line 2130-1240 and $9,669.00 in line 2130-1430 after this transfer. And last, Legal Aid, amend salary line 1460-1970 and 4290-1970 Temporary Replacement as previously approved and transferred. The Temporary Replacement is to work as a COMOT IV at the initiation step, and this position is a split salary. Part of the salary is paid by Legal Aid General fund and the balance paid by United Way/Legal Aid. That’s it, Mr. President, and I’ll make that in the form of a motion.

President Shetler: And seconded by Councilman Bassemier. Questions? Comments? Roll call please.

Libbie Au: Good morning, Libbie Au with GAGE. I’m attending the Council meeting this morning to begin to present the compliance information for the tax phase-in program. The first spreadsheet contains the compliance information for the two companies that I’ve received information for. Both companies have reported over 100 percent compliance in real estate investment. In regards to job creation, we were almost at 100 percent for both companies. One company did fall below their estimate by one employee. However, there is a letter attached to the information to address that. The second spreadsheet contains the tax estimates for both of those projects. The estimate resulted in tax revenue of approximately 85,000. I can now answer any questions from Councilmembers.

Councilmember Lloyd: I might make a point, too, it’s good to see these kind of numbers in this really tough economic climate, and I empathize with Mr. Schroeder from Crescent Plastics. They had projected 40, they achieved 39 employees, but they do many good things for this community and they’re really a model corporate citizen, so I would urge the Council to approve these.

President Shetler: Yes, any other questions? Comments? We need a motion then for approval.

President Shetler: It’s been moved and seconded. Any other questions? Roll call please.

President Shetler: Yes. There being seven ayes and no nays, the motion carries. Thank you.

Jeff Ahlers: I spoke with Tim Deisher, and some changes were made to the letter from last time. On the top of page three, there were a couple of provisions asking the County to indemnify them for, I guess, their acts and, you know, I asked that that be deleted. Some other items, and I’m going to point them out to you because you’ll just have to make a determination as to what you want to do about it. In place of that, what they did insert up there was a sentence at the top of page three that says, “Any liability of BKD and its personnel to you is limited to three times the amount of the fee you paid for this engagement as liquidated damages.” So you can either agree not to accept that or to accept that. But what they’re doing is limiting their liability. I guess your contract with them is in the approximate amount of $25,000, so they’re wanting to limit their liability, I’m not sure why a professional organization does that. I’ve not quite seen engagement letters like this from professional organizations, but nonetheless, that’s there, I’d point that out so you can either choose to approve it, or not approve it, or approve it with it X’d out, however you want to do that. The only other thing is at the bottom, the bottom of page two there’s a sentence down there talking about liability of an LLP. Some of that’s just standard language, but the main change was, is I had them take out the indemnification provisions and I didn’t see any reason for the county to ever be indemnifying a supplier or vendor. Usually you would want that to run the other way. Anyway, I’d point out that one item at the top of page three and you guys can decide whether you want to allow them to limit their liability. I’m not sure what liability arises out of job descriptions, but nonetheless, that sentence is there and you can either accept it or not.

President Shetler: That’s really kind of where my question was going. What kind of exposure you thought we might have and kind of indicating it may be nothing at all.

Jeff Ahlers: I can’t imagine that in terms of, that alone, I can’t imagine that a lot comes out of it, but who knows now days what could come up. You know, I guess if a job description was, you know, so I don’t see it as being overly critical, nonetheless, it’s there. It’s up to you whether you want to allow that limitation of liability.

President Shetler: I personally don’t have a problem with the way it’s been revised. I think it’s acceptable and I think with the $75,000 cap of the three times the legal fee, I mean, the county fee that we’re paying, that, I don’t think, myself, there is any real exposure, but...I mean, I would urge approval, but...

Troy Tornatta: Troy Tornatta, County Commissioner. I wouldn’t approve that in a million years, I mean, on the Commissioner’s side. I wouldn’t do the provision for the indemnification, I wouldn’t do a provision for a cap on their responsibilities. If they did something screwing up that bad, they need to pay for it.

President Shetler: Well, the indemnification has been taken out and we’re – that’s a done deal.

Troy Tornatta: Is that – okay. I mean, it’s in there. He said you’d have to strike it.

Jeff Ahlers: No, we took out the indemnification, but what they put in, in place of it, was wanting to cap liquidated damages at three times the value of the fees that they get. And so I had suggested that they not, but that’s what he wanted so, you know, and Mr. Deisher is not here to speak to it. So, I mean, it’s up to you to do want you want to do. If you want to strike it out and say we’ll approve it with it stricken out, then I guess they decide what they want to do with it, you know.

Councilmember Bassemier: Mr. President, I’d rather strike it out. There’s got to be a reason here. I’m a little afraid, I think we ought to – I don’t think we ought to agree to that.

Councilmember Kiefer: Can I ask a question? Councilman Lloyd, you’re an accountant. I’ve got a question. I mean, don’t most accounting firms have insurance, like liability insurance for themselves or their firm to cover errors and omissions, and things like that? I mean, I don’t understand what the big deal is on this.

Councilmember Lloyd: Yes, they do have insurance and in our engagement letters at Kruse Dicus, we don’t have a clause like that. So limiting liability, I mean, --

Councilmember Kiefer: Maybe that would be a solution is for them to have insurance to cover.

Councilmember Lloyd: They have, I’m sure they have professional liability insurance to cover malpractice.

Councilmember Kiefer: Yeah, so I don’t understand why they need any cap or anything like that. I mean, especially if they, any prudent business is going to have insurance.

Councilmember Bassemier: Then why don’t they just leave it in there if they’re already covered? I mean, you know.

Councilmember Raben: Mr. President, I’m going to make a motion to approve the agreement as written with the exception of at the top of page three, strike the sentence, “Any liability of BKD and its personnel to you is limited to three times the amount of the fee you paid for this engagement as liquidated damages.”

President Shetler: Okay, we have a motion and a second. Any other questions or comments?

Councilman Sutton: I didn’t realize there was so much concern or potential risk in liability on writing a job description. Seems pretty innocuous to me.

President Shetler: If it wasn’t, everybody would be doing it, right? Alright, any other questions? Comments? Roll call please.

President Shetler: I don’t have anything else on the agenda. Does anybody else have anything else to bring up? Yes, Councilman Lloyd?

Councilmember Lloyd: I know people have seen these tax bills, they went out, and I know a lot of the taxpayers received those Monday. We’ve heard from a number of clients on the commercial side that 40%, 50%, 60% increases like on small business owners, hotels, small retailers. So, although when you look at the bill, if you look at ‘07, that’s really the one you should compare to, but I have sympathy for those taxpayers. It’s very difficult to budget a 40 or 50% increase in your property taxes. And I’ve had conversations with our county Auditor about it. The state, in 2008, put in – was it 640 million towards property tax relief? This year, more like 140 million, so there’s a huge difference there. But coming around to the County Council, we’ve got a large responsibility of holding the line on our budget this year, and I would hope that we could hold the line to the extent of trying to operate on a flat budget or something along those lines. And I just wanted to express sympathy for the average taxpayer that’s getting hit with quite a large increase. But if you look at it over multiple years, it’s not quite so bad. Thank you.

Councilmember Kiefer: I’d like to echo your comments, Councilman Lloyd, because I got a couple of phone calls from neighbors last night asking me how much mine went up compared to how much theirs went up, so I do know that people are looking at these and realizing they’re getting a big hit.

Councilmember Goebel: I have a question for the Auditor, if I could. Could John Taxpayer, looking at the tax bill, this year or what we’re paying this year is a 1.5 cap, is that correct, on the assessed value? Does that 1.5 come after deductions or is that just the assessed value and then you make the deductions after that?

Bill Fluty: If he looks at his comparison statement and all the information that’s been provided to the taxpayer by the DLGF on their comparison statement, they can actually get to if they would qualify for their tax cap. There are a few homes, because if you take off their exemptions, that actually did qualify for a tax cap. But there are some, on certain aspects of what they have on their property, whether it be a shed or some of those things, but it’s minimal on their tax cap on some of those. But they’ll be able to get to that with that information.

Councilmember Lloyd: One other point, I don’t know if anybody saw the Evansville Courier & Press today, but we’ve got issues with the Assessor where he made, he coded properties wrong. Apartments were coded not residential, they were coded commercial, so there might be some errors there that will have to be addressed. I’d just like to express my disappointment there and ask the Auditor if he knows what effect this will be on the county to have these errors by the County Assessor.

Bill Fluty: Really, it’s a classification in code. Those corrections are being processed by his office and will move to our office. Then again, there’s going to be some ins and outs, mostly. But we will process those as they come in. The effect, I can’t predict that right now. I haven’t received those corrections. But they did not receive the tax cap that they deserve, so it will be a reduction of their bill if they hit that threshold, which, in turn, would be a reduction to the taxing unit. But that’s actually what it should have been, so that’s just getting them where they’re supposed to be.

Councilmember Lloyd: We’ve just had to deal with a lot of issues and problems from the Assessor’s office and I’m disappointed in that and I hope they can get their act together down there. Thank you.

Councilman Sutton: Now, Auditor Fluty, now we saw the article, I guess, in the paper this morning. Now, I know that the process that the state puts into place where you guys are submitting in different forms, different tables, who all is involved with that here? When we talk about the Treasurer, I mean, are there more than just the Treasurer’s office that’s involved with coming up with that final determination of what that will be? I was always under the impression that the Auditor, the Treasurer, the Assessor are all working together to compile all that information to ultimately, when we see that tax bill in the mail, so that what may be a surprise to us, when we receive the ultimate figures, that you guys already have those tables and so can you – who all is involved with that process?

Bill Fluty: All of us have different pieces and parts of it, defined duties of what we do through the process. Classification codes are the responsibility of the County Assessor, and because of this being a different year, if they’re not in the right classifications as they dumped into our system through an allocation file in March, they don’t receive the right property tax cap. These particular properties were in commercial, when they should have been in residential and they were dumped through a file, allocation file, I think, in mid-March. With that said, there’s 500 of those and we’re correcting those as they come. But we’re all involved in this process.

Councilman Sutton: Did you meet with the – did your office meet with the Assessor or the Treasurer’s office and have a discussion about this when you guys discovered maybe this classification issue?

Bill Fluty: It came to light last week in their office through calls from apartment owners that they believed their classification was incorrect. They called the Assessor’s office and I think they started the process. I’ve been working with their staff on just what we needed to correct these, just the correct paperwork on these things, so we’ve been in contact with them. We’ve managed to make a form with these nine classifications that we’ll need for all property tax corrections. They’ll fill that form out, attach it to a 133, we’ll get those and process them as soon as they come over. I’m not sure how quickly they will come over but as they come over, we’ll process them. One of two things: it will be a correction to the spring bill, which is doubtful it will get corrected for the spring bill, but then it will be a correction to their fall bill.

Councilman Sutton: And how many are we talking about? How many bills do we estimate have incorrect information on them –

Bill Fluty: Appeals, I don’t know. What we’re talking about here, I understood there was 500. As those come across, I’ll have a direct count of how many there are. That was just an estimate provided by their office to our office just to inform us of the workload that is coming to our office, and to able to answer questions on apartment buildings, you know, how does this process work on the caps. Then again, we’ll just work through those corrections.

Councilman Sutton: So you guys are all working together, it sounds like, on this and discussing and getting it –

Councilmember Goebel: I’m not sure that we should even be discussing this because we don’t have the information in hand. If they’re all working together hand in hand, as the departments should, I think these things will all be remedied under the code or the law of the state. I do think, most importantly, people, in general, were expecting a continuation of the major property tax downward cycle that we received last year. I think a lot of people now are faced with sticker shock again and didn’t fully understand how much of a break the state granted to property tax owners, and now we’re facing, some people are going back almost to the level we had a couple of years ago. And that’s, I think Councilmember Lloyd said we have to maintain our budget here because we’ve got to try to protect as best we can as a group, the property taxpayers in Vanderburgh County.

President Shetler: I’m going to piggyback just real quickly on what Councilman Goebel mentioned. And the state put in, what, 625 or 650 million dollars last year to help ease the burden on taxpayers, which is about 100 and something million dollars this year –

Councilmember Goebel: When I received my tax bill last year, I hid it because I thought it was a mistake, and I didn’t want anyone -- I was going to pay it and shut the door. But this year, I find that it, like everyone else, --

President Shetler: In addition to that, those folks who are city residents also received an 8% homestead credit that they no longer receive from the city part of it. So there is a couple of significant factors that have increased the taxes which are out of our control. Now what is in our control is the budgets coming up and the fact that we’ve got to be very diligent in making sure that that line is held so that there are no new tax increases, that we do our part. So I’m piggybacking a bit on what you said and we’re going to have to be good stewards of that this year.

Councilmember Bassemier: Yes, Councilman Lloyd said he was disappointed in the Assessor’s office and, Jonathan, I think you need to explain yourself, your point, what happened, whatever.

Jonathan Weaver: Well, thank you. I’m Jonathan Weaver, Vanderburgh County Assessor. Thank you for bringing up those points. If you look at, really, number 4a on your bill, you can see the comparison that the state supplemented over the last couple of years. Councilman Lloyd, I’d like to answer your allegations or whatever problems you may have with my office. You mentioned that article, that’s a .6% error that we inadvertently made. What do you mean by not getting my act together? We submitted our trending for ‘09 pay ‘10 May 15^th. We’re about to get approved for next year’s tax bill already, our assessment data, almost before this year’s bill was calculated. I mean, we stepped up this process so the taxpayers can get their bill months before it’s due. And that’s what needs to happen, not weeks, so they can save up for this major expense. So we stepped that up, we processed over 12,000 appeals in the last two years. Nobody in the state has done that many, that fast, in that amount of time. I mean, we work hard so what else do you perceive as a problem in my office?

Councilmember Lloyd: Just a question I have, and I have a call in to an associate of mine that has apartments in the county. What’s going to be the cost to the county to redo the statements? Will that be minimal, or if we’re going to redo their fall bill?

Jonathan Weaver: That’s a question for whoever sends out the bill, the rebill.

Bill Fluty: There’s 500 more, but it’s just a process of reprinting that bill, calculating. I have a corrections clerk who is very busy. She’ll just calculate those corrections, put it in the mail, send it to that taxpayer. They’ll have to know what their corrected bill is because it will be a reduction in November, is what I’m assuming it will be.

Jonathan Weaver: And what we’ve recommended to those apartment complexes through their representatives was that, you know, we’re going to fix the problem. We recommend that they pay this installment, and it appears that November’s installment will be cheaper and they’ll have more money for the holidays, and they seem to maybe appreciate that.

President Shetler: How many multiple family units are we talking about, parcels of property?

Jonathan Weaver: We’re talking 500 parcels, and there’s 81,000 in the county, so this is .6%. Point six of a percent.

President Shetler: But out of multiple family units, there’s 500, so all of those were incorrect is what you’re saying.

Jonathan Weaver: We got a memo on October 30^th from the DLGF and we were approved, our trending, last year. We submitted it in July. We were approved October 7^th, we submitted it to the Auditor October 31^st. In that couple of week’s time period there, we were – we had a – we were in contact with Manatron, who does our assessment software and also does the tax billing system. They wrote scripts for the program for the allocations, and those were what we went with, it was verified by the DLGF memo of October 30^th and we went with it. And we, at that point in time, the bulk of our work was done and if there was a problem, I feel it should have been brought to my attention.

Bill Fluty: I have just a comment on that. It’s two parts. He gave us the gross assessed valuations in October. The allocation file actually came in March, which actually breaks down the scripts run that puts these into these buckets. So there’s two pieces to this equation. Then also with that file sitting there in October, we were implementing a new system at that time, it got up and running somewhere in February. About the time the allocations, – the allocation file, which we needed, we couldn’t bill without it because it actually puts everything into the right buckets to apply the right cap, came in March. I think it’s mid-March, but I have the date for that if you’d like to see that. But that’s actually when that came that actually breaks those down and puts them in those correct buckets. So it’s two processes here.

President Shetler: So actually, the error rate on multiple family was 100%? I mean, you’re saying that all of the multiple families were misclassified?

Jonathan Weaver: I didn’t say all the multiple families, this is what I was told.

Councilmember Lloyd: Public service announcement. Human Relations Commission banquet is Thursday, June 18^th at 7 p.m. The guest speaker, Dr. Mary Frances Berry, former director of the US Civil Rights Commission. Tickets are $30 and I hope everybody can attend. It’s at the Centre. Thank you. June 18^th, Thursday evening at 7:00.

President Shetler: Any other announcements, comments? Motion for adjournment would be in order.

(There being no further business to come before the Council, the meeting was adjourned at 9:44 a.m.)

1050-1531	Civ. Shift Differential	1,500.00	1,500.00
Total		1,500.00	1,500.00

1361-1990	Extra Help	9,856.00	9,856.00
1361-1900	FICA	754.00	754.00
Total		10,610.00	10,610.00

1480-3460	Consultant	25,500.00	25,500.00
Total		25,500.00	25,500.00

2031-1070-4230	Coroner’s Vehicles	24,000.00	24,000.00
Total		24,000.00	24,000.00

2490-1090-3530	Contractual Services	8,822.00	8,822.00
2490-1090-3540	Maintenance Contract	700.00	700.00
Total		9,522.00	9,522.00

3660-4197	2009 Facility Improvements	340,750.00	72,000.00
Total		340,750.00	72,000.00

4290-3990	Miscellaneous	1,028.00	1,028.00
Total		1,028.00	1,028.00