The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 5^th day of May 2009 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 8:35 a.m. by County Council President Tom Shetler, Jr.

President Shetler: It’s May the 5^th, Tuesday morning. I’d like to welcome you all to the County Council meeting this morning. First, I’d like 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: We have five here and two present, that’s makes seven accountable. So we’ll go on from there. I’d like to ask Councilman Sutton if he would please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

President Shetler: Next is the minutes from the April 1^st regular meeting. Do I have a motion for approval or any questions?

Councilmember Raben: Okay, thank you, Mr. President. First on the agenda today under Sheriff, we have six items listed for a total of $62,183. This is for the – you know, I do have one question, Sheriff. The three Court Screeners, the FTO Incentive and FICA and PERF, for a total of $62,183. I should have asked you this a few moments ago. The FTO Incentive, is there, that $1,200, if we’re doing four people at $100 a month, this will only pay three months. Is that all you need?

Eric Williams: Yeah, I’m set with the appropriation to get me through the rest of the year because of how we’ve done it the first part of the year. And then, obviously, in the detail I sent you for the follow-up would give the number what the appropriation request will be in our budget for 2010. But yeah, my request will take care of the rest of the year...at 125 is what I’d asked for.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. Do we want to discuss that also, because I know that was a concern?

President Shetler: Yeah, I think we had two separate questions and I guess since we started talking about the number of people, let’s deal with that issue and then we’ll go on to the amount. So do we have any questions further about going from four to eight? Yes, Councilman Lloyd?

Councilmember Lloyd: I mean, I think four to eight, the way the Sheriff is going to use it, and I guess you had indicated that it would cut back on some of your overtime?

Eric Williams: Yes, I sent a follow-up with the minimum amount that I think we’ll save on our comp. time/overtime budget next year. It would more than pay for itself that way.

Councilmember Lloyd: Okay and this applies to what, 113 deputies? Or that’s how it’s mainly going to be used, the four versus the eight?

Eric Williams: Yeah, the full training dollars go to a selected four currently, eight hopefully, deputies. Eight specific deputies, it’s not spread out across the entire group.

Councilmember Lloyd: Right. That’s all I have on that. I guess the second question would be, 100 versus 125, is a 25% increase. That’s something that I think might be better handled in the budget and, you know, the city does a thousand a year, the Sheriff is doing $1,200, I think we might be better off leaving it at a hundred a month. That’s my opinion.

Councilmember Kiefer: Sheriff, I think the police department offers some other incentives other than money, and I don’t know if it’s something that would translate well into the Sheriff’s department or not, but like, they give their field training officers maybe like the better equipment that’s available, like maybe the better laptops or maybe, you know, a little bit better vehicles or something like that. I mean, is there some other incentive other than financial you might be able to utilize?

Eric Williams: We already try to do some of that within reason. My fleet is not near as deep as the Evansville Police Department’s, so we try to make sure that all of our fleet is in decent condition and everybody gets a decent piece of equipment regardless of their assignment. Now when we do add new vehicles to the fleet, we try to cycle those through the field training deputies first when it’s appropriate. But to say that one car is better than the other is probably a stretch of the imagination more often than not.

President Shetler: Alright, other questions? Okay, do we have a motion then or do we have a –

Councilmember Lloyd: I mean, I would recommend changing line one to a thousand dollars.

Councilmember Raben: There is actually is a motion to approve, but we can break this up or –

President Shetler: Why don’t we break it up into two different parts there? Let’s go first with the first question on increasing the number of field deputies or officers from four to eight, if you would, and then we’ll do a second question on the amount.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, well, I’ll rescind my original motion and I’ll make a motion first to increase the number of field deputies to eight. I’ll make that in the form of a motion.

President Shetler: Alright, we’ve got a motion and a second. Roll call please – or questions about it? Roll call.

Councilmember Raben: Can we ask one more question? Just shooting from the hip here, how many hours a month or a year do you think in addition to their normal responsibilities do they spend training?

Eric Williams: Above and beyond their normal eighty hours? They spend a few hours after every shift doing reports or before shift getting ready, preparing lesson plans and doing those kinds of things. But the real incentive comes from the increased responsibility that goes with being a field training deputy. They’re responsible for new people that get hired on for the first year of their employment. They’re assigned to somebody for a month at a time and rotated through the shifts. The responsibility comes from supervising another person as a non-supervisor, from critiquing them, seeing to it that their weaknesses are remediated, their strengths are recognized and a lot of other things short of just additional hours. I mean, I would say that the additional hours are minor compared to just the increased responsibility of documenting, I mean, they write very rigorous reports on a daily basis about the progress of these individuals so that we can make good decisions prior to the probationary year being up, whether or not we want to retain them as deputies before their first year is up. So I don’t know if that answers your question, but there’s not a real tremendous increase in hours. While there is some, some use it more than others, but the real responsibility comes from their day to day activities.

Councilman Sutton: Now you had indicated – I’m sorry, were you going to say something?

Councilmember Raben: The rest of the question was, do you feel like, number one, that usually, it’s the best of the best claiming that role –

Eric Williams: I think last week I made mention that we’re very selective in who we pick because those are the people that need to set the image for who we want our new people to become, how we want them to police, how we want them to treat the community, so we do try to pick the best of the best when we’re looking at our field training deputies. Not to say that everybody that works in the Sheriff’s office isn’t a high quality, professional individual, but there are some people that have a greater aptitude for training, and a greater aptitude for being able to critique and write reports and those kinds of things. And we’ve seen, historically, that the field training deputies are oftentimes the ones that do well at the promotional process. So I think that’s a pretty clear indicator that they do excel at what they do.

Councilman Sutton: I was just going to ask, you had mentioned regarding this, when was the last time that this has been adjusted? I mean, it’s a hundred dollars now, how long has it been at a hundred dollars?

Eric Williams: Before my time. I would guess that was probably established in Sheriff Hamner’s administration.

Councilman Sutton: So we’re talking about what, three hundred dollars, I guess, per man here and...what’s that? Additional $25.

Councilman Sutton: You had mentioned something about just the equipment or supplies that you guys put into this additional training and the cost that’s incurred with that. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Councilman Sutton: The deputies that are selected for this particular program, what you guys, the Sheriff’s department, what you put into getting those people prepared to provide this training.

Eric Williams: There is a certification process they go through that they would go to a school where they become certified field training deputies just in that area of training: training new people, training them on how to become good law enforcement professionals. In addition, we would send them to the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy or some other place in the state which would certify them to be an instructor for the state. That instructor status by the state would allow that anytime they teach, either individually or as a group, that those hours can be applied toward the continuing education credits required by all law enforcement in the state of Indiana. They’re usually the first ones to go to specialized training so that they can come back. We try to use the ‘train the trainer” approach within the Sheriff’s office. It becomes very costly to train everybody at the expensive school, but if I can train four or five individuals that are very good at instructing, it’s much easier then to distribute that new information across the board to the rest of the Sheriff’s office. So we do make a fairly sizable investment in those people through time as far as training dollars go.

Eric Williams: I know oftentimes we get compared to the Evansville Police Department, you know, we’re sister agencies in the same community, but there are a lot of differences in different areas. They have a much deeper pool of people to choose from. They have more field training – for them its field training officers, to distribute the workload amongst. My eight compared to their number is probably pretty small, so I think in this case, I mean, I would really ask that the Council – I would encourage the Council to go on and award the $125 and let the Sheriff’s office be ahead of them on one thing.

Councilman Sutton: Well, and I think it is difficult to make the comparison between what the city police does and –

Eric Williams: While our goals are relatively the same, our environments and the way we do business are substantially different.

Councilman Sutton: Well, and if you look man per man, or I guess woman per woman as well, on the respective departments, those who are out there in the field, I think we would find on the whole, our Sheriff’s deputies have a higher level degree of training and education level than those on the city. Not disparaging the police department in any way at all, but just looking strictly man per man, you guys have a higher level per person than they do on the city side.

Eric Williams: I’m a little biased and I’d like to think that. But both agencies are great agencies. One of the primary differences that I see between the two agencies is our missions and the things that we do day to day. The Evansville Police Department has a substantial number of officers that are deployed in a fairly concentrated population. One of the advantages that they oftentimes have is the ability to deploy multiple people to a scene very quickly because they’ve got more people working at any given time. The thing that the deputies find themselves doing is having to deal with situations by themselves. You know, we get a run at Baseline and I-65 at the Armstrong Recreation Center, you may be dealing with a fight by yourself for several minutes before you get a backup there. And so it requires a different way of thinking about things. Not that one is better or different, it’s just the nature of the areas we police. You know, I don’t know that my guys would do overly well in the center city or in the concentrated areas where they’ve got the run volume that goes on and on and on and on. It’s just different styles.

President Shetler: I might point out that underneath the present, that at $1,000 or, I’m sorry, $1,200 a year per four that we presently have, we’re spending $4,800. At $125 times eight, that will be in the neighborhood of what, $12,000? So that would be a 150% increase in that particular line item and I think that’s where my concern would be. Later on in the meeting we’re going to be talking a little bit about how we’re going to need to hold the line pretty tight on next year’s increases and stuff, so kind of setting the tone for that –

Eric Williams: I completely understand, however, this line item has been neglected for 16 plus years now and, you know, part of being a professional agency and recruiting the best to do this, there has to be some incentive. I would tell you that probably the workload is far greater than the $125 I’m asking for, but these people also love what they do and they want to do it. So I’m not kidding anybody, these guys want to do this job because they enjoy it, they feel like it’s a very good benefit. They feel like they’re really making a difference in the office but I have to reward them to some degree commensurate with the workload I’m asking them to do. Otherwise, I’m not going to get the qualified people to do the job.

Councilmember Lloyd: I was going to echo what you said. I mean, I think what we’re looking at with the county employees is the possibility of a zero percent increase, so I don’t think this sets a very good example if we’re going to give that kind of increase and I would like to see it pursued at budget time. But, I mean, it’s not a large amount of money, but I think it sets a bad example.

President Shetler: Okay, any further discussion? Do we have a...we need a motion for the hundred to –

Councilman Sutton: I’d like to make a motion in relation to what we have presented before us at the $1,200 level.

President Shetler: Right, so it will be $1,500 a year annually. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Roll call please.

Councilmember Raben: I’m going to make a brief statement before I make this vote. But I think it’s important because we’re talking about training our officers that, if it’s a matter of $300 a year, in the overall scheme of things, if we have the best people on the street, I don’t think it’s really damaging our big picture that much, so I’m going to vote yes.

Councilmember Kiefer: I’m in favor of doing something for the officers because I think they need it, but I think as Councilman Lloyd said, I really prefer to do this at budget time and do this for 2010. So I’d be in favor of doing it at that time instead of now. So with that, I’ll vote nay.

President Shetler: I feel likewise, that it is a $300 per man increase, but we’ve doubled the man force, so we’re dealing with a 150% increase overall, so I’m going to have to vote no. So we have four ayes and three nays, motion carries.

Eric Williams: I don’t know if it’s appropriate to comment, just so you know, though, the year increase will actually reduce some of the pay, because they’re going to lose the overtime, so they’re actually going to get a reduction, they’re just going to get a consistent $125. So you really are going to save money and they’re actually, four of them are going to get a reduction for anyone that actually looks at real dollars they’re seeing. But this makes it consistent across the board for everybody who is doing a like job.

Councilmember Raben: Next, under 1050-1130-0236 down through 1050-1910 PERF, for a total, let’s see, we have to back that out.

Councilmember Raben: No, we’ve not voted on the other. We voted on the $1,200.

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

Councilmember Raben: I can, do you want me to read them in completely? Okay, 1050-1130-0236 in the amount of $17,653, 1050-1130-0237 and 1050-1130-0238 both in the amount of $17,653, FICA $4,052, PERF 3,972, for a total of $60,983.

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

Councilmember Raben: Next under Sheriff/Domestic Violence grant account in the amount of $18,000, I’ll move approval.

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

Councilmember Raben: Please. If you turn to page three on your agenda, under Jail Project, 3660-4197, this is listed under the Jail Set Aside account, the request is $340,750. The Sheriff has prioritized his list of what he deems is the most important, the things that need the most immediate attention out there, which if you add it up, it’s roughly $145,000.

Eric Williams: If I could interject real quick, that was myself and Mr. Rector did that together, so his input was taken into account on this list.

Councilmember Raben: One thing to consider, I would like to delay this request until next month. I did place a call to Mr. Rector and I think he’s on vacation until the 11^th. So, obviously, he could not be here for good reasons, but there is an unappropriated balance within the original bond issue for the new facility out there that has several hundred thousand dollars that is laying there, that we’re paying interest on today, that is within the Building Authority’s control. And I would like to spend from that first before we tap into General fund monies. So I would like, if the other six members are willing, to delay this until June.

Councilmember Lloyd: The county would be, I mean, I guess the Building Authority would be earning interest on it. We wouldn’t have to pay them anything for that, though.

Councilmember Raben: Well, but it’s part of the original bond issue. So yeah, I guess, if they’ve got reinvested, they’re paying interest and they may be gaining interest. But, you know, regardless, they’re still paying interest on the money. Whether they’re coming out ahead, I don’t know.

Councilmember Raben: That was the original bond issue of $35,000,000 or whatever the figure was back several years ago.

President Shetler: Sheriff, is there anything in here that would create a problem for you if waited a month?

Eric Williams: No. I spoke to Councilman Raben earlier and said I have no issue with waiting if it means getting the numbers where everybody is comfortable. There’s a few that I don’t think we can prolong indefinitely, obviously, but if it’s next month I might suggest, because I know the confusion that I had trying to figure out where this would come from and then maybe between now and then that myself and Dave Rector and maybe somebody from the Auditor’s Office go through and look at all of the Jail related accounts and come up with a balance of what’s where and who’s got what, so that we can make some informed decisions because I’m still a little unclear on who has which pockets of dollars and who controls them.

Councilmember Goebel: Sheriff, if we are going to wait, thank you for allowing that or going along with that. But on the ladders to the second level, chase platforms, I think there are 16 there, do we actually need all of those or have we gotten by, maybe you can ask Dave before our next meeting.

Eric Williams: I know that issue well enough because it came up during the final stages of design. And the way those chases are designed, they’re independent chases on the sides of each of the housing units. They don’t connect with one another. They’re just a tower that goes up the side of the housing unit. And there are 16 separate towers like that throughout the facility, so you couldn’t use one to get to the other to – you know, the thought would be that they’re all in a row or you can work your way down, and you can’t. They’re separate, independent little towers that you’d have to get inside of each one of them.

Eric Williams: I probably can’t say on tape exactly what I suggest to them, but they have to carry ladders around and it’s a difficult entrance to get in there and to get them turned up inside there and they spend just as much time getting in and out of them as they do working on the problem that they’re trying to fix. And I think they can construct a ladder that’s affixed to the wall of the chase that takes up a lot less room, freeing up space to work. It’s pretty tight quarters inside those chases.

President Shetler: Okay. Any other questions? Does somebody have an objection? I think the way we might handle this is to actually zero that from that particular fund because your request is actually to look at taking it through a different fund anyway, so zero this and get a motion and vote on it, and then we can resubmit underneath the –

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

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

Eric Williams: While I’m here, will you give an affirming vote on the E911 request? I’m hesitant to go to City Council until I have the approval of my own Council.

Councilmember Goebel: And that funding will come from Central Dispatch, correct?

President Shetler: Yeah, it’s not actually appropriating anything right now, just kind of giving his approval on it, so since we have a motion and a second, what we’ll do is just do a voice vote on it, unless it’s real close or real objectionable rather than doing a roll call on it. Do I have any questions with the Sheriff about...

Eric Williams: I will go to the City Council once you affirm it because it’s my understanding that both bodies have to give affirming votes on that request.

President Shetler: The next then, County Assessor, and that is, yes, Councilman Raben?

Councilmember Raben: Okay, Mr. President, under County Assessor, everybody has a clear understanding as to why we’re doing these appropriations and then later in the agenda, repealing funds. So I am going to move, under County Assessor, account 1090-1500-1090 down through 1090-1910, for a total of $457,000. I’m going to move approval.

Councilmember Lloyd: To clarify, this is mainly a bookkeeping change to move, to put this into the County Assessor and take it out of all the townships, right?

Councilmember Raben: Okay, next under County Assessor, 1090-4114 Office Renovations in the amount of $70,000. Mr. President, I’m going to move that these be set in at zero and move to discussion.

President Shetler: We have a motion and a second. Do I have any questions about the motion? Yes, Councilman Lloyd?

Councilmember Lloyd: One thing about this, looking at the grand scheme of things, you know, we received the Assessor’s plan that kind of laid out how the office operates. But when you’ve combined what, four townships into one office, if the County Assessor would come here and say, you know, we’re reorganizing duties and we can eliminate four positions, would you be willing to pay $70,000 for renovations, I think the Council would be more favorable toward that. If, you know, we would see some movement on the County Assessor’s side from reorganizing the duties and better taking care of what’s going on in that office. It’s just, when you look in the business world, many times when you have combinations you eliminate duplicate positions, and we haven’t seen any of that out of the County Assessor. So, you know, if he would move to generate some efficiencies in that office -- and there is one of his deputies.

Councilmember Lloyd: I just wanted to make that point that if he came in and said, we’re going to reorganize, there’s a possibility we can eliminate some positions, would the Council be interested in assisting with $70,000 for office renovations? I think he would get a more favorable look than what is occurring now.

Councilmember Raben: And with or without that, I mean, my main reason or concern with the appropriation in the amount of $70,000 is, you know, we still don’t have an affirmative plan on what we’re doing next door with the 30,000 feet on the other side of that wall. So until we get that far along in the process with that space, I hate to spend $70,000 here when it’s quite possible somebody down the hall in and around this office could possibly move into that newer space and allow him more opportunities there. So I understand the situation down there is crowded and no doubt, I mean, some expansions or renovations need to happen, but until we know exactly what we’re going to do next door I think we’re foolish to spend $70,000 for what might be just a band-aid effect.

President Shetler: Councilman Bassemier was actually next and then Councilman Kiefer.

Glen Koob: Oh, I’m sorry, Glen Koob, Vanderburgh County Assessor’s Office. Before you ask me, let me just say, I think last week Assessor Weaver said that he was going to be gone this week to an advanced Assessor class or school.

Councilmember Bassemier: Since we’ve consolidated the township assessors, in your honest opinion, have we saved any money since this has all been changed?

Glen Koob: Yes, we lost three full-time people and then, as Jim will know, this sticks in my craw, we lost all of our part-time people. And you saved probably $25,000 a person by hiring the part-time people to go out in the field and let our full-time people in there. I would like to visit the part about what exactly people we could get rid of. And there’s not people doing duplicate jobs. I don’t understand that. But we have a real estate department, the people that were chief deputies are now bringing their knowledge, honestly, to the real estate department. And I can speak on the real estate department because that’s what I deal with, okay. And I know the rest of the jobs because I was an Assessor at Perry Township. So I don’t see where there’s duplication of jobs, honestly.

Councilmember Bassemier: The other question I have, I know a couple of years ago, I think the Commissioners and all of you got together and said it would be best to stay in that location, but that was before they consolidated the Assessor’s office. Is there a possibility now that your office, instead of spending the $70,000, move to the old jail and let them renovate the old jail for your offices? Would that be feasible at the present time?

Glen Koob: You know, I really can’t speak on it. I thought it was going to be more expensive to move us to the old jail and I thought we were in the thought that since we were there with the Auditor, the Recorder and the Treasurer, who we deal with every day, I thought we were going to stay where we were, just remove the walls. I don’t know. I’m really, I guess, not in on the beginning, the basic, you know, discussions with it, but I thought that’s where we were. And the reason why we need to move, Center Township is larger – I have 16 people in my office in the real estate division and we’re all in Knight Township’s old office. Well, as Councilman Kiefer and Councilman Goebel, they’ve been down there and they saw, when you walk in the door, we have one lady up under the counter with her desk, it’s not even a desk, it’s a table. Then we have three other people to her left that their desks are back to back and then there’s another one on the side of her. And so as you, you have to kind of wind your way to get into the one door. You know, and then in the very back office it’s like a quarter of what an officeholder would sit in. A quarter of an office. And you have two people in there. Thank goodness they’re both small ladies. But we have two desks in there where there’s two people sitting in there. So it is cramped in my office. And we just need to move them down, you know, to shift the – and it would be nice if it was wide open like the Auditor’s Office and the Treasurer’s Office because, and the Recorders’s Office because we do intermingle a lot. Like now, I have to walk next door to get to my two real estate people that are in another office because they don’t fit in mine, and I have to go over there and tell them their duties and, you know, explain to them, again, what I just told the people in my office. I guess they could have come over, but you know, I had enough...then the next department is the transfer department, we deal with them a lot because they do the deeds. Then the other one is the sales disclosure, you know, it would be nice if we were in there because when there is a sale, we have to know what that sale is about. Is it an arm’s length sale, or whatever? So yes, it would be great if we were all in there, that we could all intermingle and do our duties. And I don’t know, I really don’t know, honestly, who you could get rid of because they all have a duty. And we do help. If the personal property department, if they’re busy, like they’re really going to be busy May 15^th, they’ll get buckets, and buckets, and buckets, postal boxes of mail because of the personal property forms. Then, right now, we’re helping the transfer department do addressing, and we’ve got 24,000 addresses to work on and correct and look at to make sure they’re correct for the dispatch center out there. So, you know, we intermingle with a lot of offices. It’s not like we, as Councilman Kiefer will tell you, you know, we’re pretty busy. I think he was pretty overwhelmed when he came down there that day. We do a lot down there. We still have to look at houses, we don’t just go out and say, oh, that house sold for $100,000, so that’s what the assessment is. You don’t do it that way. You have sales, comps, you have costs that you have to go by according to the state, and income, which you don’t use on houses, but you do use on commercial. So that’s what we do. Come on down and see us.

Councilmember Kiefer: Thank you. Glen, I totally appreciate what you guys are going through and I would not say that your people aren’t working. A couple of things as far as from my perspective is, last week, I think Mr. Rector said there may be some ways to do it less expensively. You know, one idea was maybe, and I think Councilman Sutton suggested this, maybe relocate on a temporary basis while they come in there and get the construction done and knock it out, so that could save some money. And then I agree with Councilman Raben, you know, we still have a master plan that I think we’re waiting on as far as this vacant space, so for some of those reasons, you know, I’d kind of like to wait to see because I don’t want to rush off to spend the 70 and then later it comes out in the master plan that, boy, this is a more ideal way of doing it. Or, David Rector comes up with some better, more efficient way to do the work so it’s a little bit less expensive. So for those reasons is why I’d like to wait to see how we might be able to do this less expensively. And additionally, and I do appreciate the fact that you guys did have GAGE in there. I’d really like to see what their report is when that final product comes out as well. But thank you for what you’re doing. Appreciate it.

Councilmember Goebel: I don’t think we need to go over, I think this group is going to vote to hold for now. I think right now the Assessor’s Office is in a temporary stage regardless, so we do need to make sure this is exactly what we want. I do wholeheartedly agree that we should keep the Assessor’s Office where it is located and I don’t know what offices might be able to be moved to the other area, but I think that plan has to be developed before we vote funding for this. On a different topic, do you know if the state legislature granted a delay in the Reassessment since their session dealing with that is over? I know they’ve got to come back for the final –

Glen Koob: You know, we had a telephone conference with the DLGF a couple of weeks ago and, Barry Wood, he’s like the Assistant DLGF Director, he told me he would call me and he gave me the bill number. It was House Bill something where they were, you know how they get together. I’m not real sure. Do you know? I don’t know.

Bill Fluty: I can tell you what’s proposed. There is a plan now, and where they’re headed, there is a lot going on right now and I can’t say that it has or hasn’t been passed, but the proposal is to delay the reassessment completely or actually do away with it. But then actually offer up a rolling reassessment, which actually allows doing 20,000 parcels in each county, with actually a percentage of either farm, ag, industrial, or residential. So they’re lessening what they have to accomplish every year and do it on a 20,000 parcel basis or some percentage that fits that county. So reassessment, if it goes forward, it’s going to change dynamically. It’s going to be less of a burden because it’s very difficult for them to get all 96,000 parcels done in a year’s time. So they’re looking for a rolling reassessment.

Glen Koob: Instead of being 18 months, it’s going to be every year. We’re going to do 20,000 parcels. And that would be like the size, say, of Armstrong, German, Perry, Union and part of Scott. But that’s just residential.

Councilmember Goebel: And an individual’s property would be reassessed every five years if you do 20% each year, correct?

Councilmember Goebel: So the reassessment workload is going to be per year, knocked down 80%?

Glen Koob: Well, I know, but that’s the reassessment workload, but we still have, say, for instance, you build a house after March 1, 2009, we still have to pick you up for 2010 and put you on the rolls because we may not hit your house for four years down the road, so we can’t let your house sit there not paying taxes on it for four years. So we have to do our ongoing duties. You know what I’m saying?

Councilmember Goebel: You might become quite popular if you could work that out.

Councilmember Goebel: The other question I had was concerning Pictometry. Have we had those photos taken or is that going to be delayed until fall?

Glen Koob: No, I believe they’ve taken the photos and I believe we’re supposed to get them in June, that’s what – rumor has it. I really am probably not a good person to ask that one because I haven’t seen the photos or I haven’t talked to the people. That’s not in my bailiwick. I don’t know.

Councilmember Goebel: We haven’t gotten official word here after it was approved.

Glen Koob: I’ve been doing trending since February and I’m finished actually for next year.

Councilmember Goebel: I assume then that it has not been done. Is that a good bet?

Councilmember Lloyd: To your point, Pictometry was going to allow the office to operate more efficiently as well.

Glen Koob: Yes, it will. What Pictometry will do, is if you go – well, let’s don’t use you. If a taxpayer would go out and they would put an addition on their house and not get a building permit, it will come, a show of, like, say for instance, we’re taking these pictures, I’m using this as an example, okay? Say we would take these pictures this year in 2009 and next year, while we’re doing the reassessment, it’s still doing our pickups. Someone would go out and put a room addition on or build a new garage, which happens a lot farther out in the county. And we would know then if we had other pictures taken, that they had put an addition on their house or put a new garage in because we wouldn’t have it. It would – what it does is, it shows your original house and then it, the way I understand it is, it outlines it in red, the new part that you put on. If you put a two-story house, an addition up, and a lot of people are remodeling now because it’s so expensive to build and with the economy. You know, so they are remodeling. And believe it or not, sorry taxpayers of Vanderburgh County, they don’t always get a permit. So that’s what Pictometry is going to help with a lot.

Bill Fluty: Let me, I think I said 20,000 parcels. I meant to say 20% of the parcels, if anybody caught that. So, did I say 20%?

Glen Koob: And we have 82,000 parcels in residential, commercial, tax exempt, that’s not counting the personal property we do now or the deed changes or the transfers, well, that’s transfers of real estate or any of that. That just is in the real estate department.

Councilman Sutton: Now, I know a lot of what you guys are dealing with wasn’t of your making, it was things related to the referendum and to the state changes and all regarding how your office operates and all the offices coming together, but I was going to ask and I don’t know if you would be able, I don’t know if you’ve got the response since Assessor Weaver isn’t here and Mr. Rector isn’t in town as well, but regarding the discussion we had last week, and Councilman Kiefer mentioned it regarding the suggestions on how we might be able to look at this project, perhaps a more efficient or maybe a less costly way, has there been any progress made on that suggestion?

Glen Koob: I can’t answer that, I’m sorry. I’m sure I could – I’ll make a note and tell Jonathan when he gets back maybe to contact you and let you know that answer.

Councilman Sutton: I think that what we’re – I think you guys have explained, and rationally so, how it’s important that you’re in the location that you’re in regarding the other offices that you deal with. But I think one of the questions that we are still really plodding over is how this project can be done, recognizing that you guys are all divided off and would like to have it, the efficiency of being able to walk across the room and hand a piece of paper rather than going in and out of the office, that type of thing. So if we can get some indication on when that progress is going to begin on looking at some other alternatives rather than this second or third shift proposal, that does drive up the cost considerably and if there are some other options or Mr. Rector was a little – he wasn’t quite sure if relocating the office on a temporary basis was something that was doable, but –

Glen Koob: I don’t know how that’s going to work. That’s like – I’m not being flippant or anything, but that’s like moving all you guys and your computers and stuff into the restroom. You know, moving all of us back across the hall. I mean, can you imagine?

Councilman Sutton: But at the same time, too, the amount of work that a contractor can do in say, an eight hour shift, and then get you back in line to be ready to perform your duties at 8 a.m. the next morning, that’s going to significantly cut down on the amount of work. You figure moving the items out to start the project and then moving them back at the end of the project, you’re cutting out a considerable amount of time from that contractor and it is stretching out this project.

Glen Koob: How does – Bill, how did you do your office over there at the Auditor’s office?

Councilman Sutton: So perhaps, maybe that’s something that he can, as they begin to explore this a little further, like I said, I know you aren’t prepared necessarily to discuss that and cover that today, but as soon as we could hear something, I think will give us at least more to work with considering this request we’ve got here today.

Glen Koob: Okay, to whoever asked me about the Pictometry? I forgot. Councilman Goebel, Eric just got an email and said that the photos have been taken for Pictometry, okay?

President Shetler: Thank you. Okay, I think it boils down to, there’s a couple of different reasons here, one, we’d like to see some greater efficiency gained in the office to help facilitate a movement, and then second is, that we would like to see a master plan of the building so we don’t spend those monies again down the road here, and I think those are two good, valid reasons why we might want to consider not spending $70,000 today, but putting that off. The next time Mr. Rector is here, I would like to point out, he’s done an excellent job in taking care of this building and putting it together and I understand that his dilemma is that there is a change of administration constantly within: between Commissioners, Councils, City Council, County Council, Mayor or whatever, and as soon as he gets a direction, somebody else is out and a new person is in, and there is a new direction. Basically, that the board that’s set up there is a bipartisan apolitical board and I guess, basically, he needs to just probably just take it like he’s done everything else and just make a decision, show it to us all, some of us are going to not like every part of it, but we’re going to like a lot of it. And just, that becomes our master plan and go with it so that we all feel rooted in what the plan is going to be for the future for this building.

Glen Koob: And just one real quick comment on that, this is a little bit different circumstance, as Councilman Sutton said, is that we’ve taken eight offices and put them into one office or to four offices, I guess. We’ve taken eight offices and that’s a little bit different because I don’t think it was designed for eight. So that’s where the difference is. I don’t think any, like say, for instance, Bill, if he changes in the Auditor’s office, you know, I know what you’re saying, nobody, or they’d be silly to go in there and redo that Auditor’s office or the Treasurer’s office or whatever, but now, all their walls are down. Ours aren’t, and I understand what you’re saying.

President Shetler: There’s no doubt that it would help facilitate smoother working environment for you all, but I think, you know, the risk of duplicating those dollars down the road, to me, is too great to vote in the affirmative on it today. And I would hate to see us do that. We don’t have money to do that with today. I would like –

Glen Koob: I tell you what, you go ahead and give us ours and then down the road, you tell them no, okay. Thank you.

President Shetler: The other thing that, you know, and this has nothing to do, it does somewhat in the Assessor’s office, just trying to think out if the box here a little bit, I think we may need to look at Auditor, Treasurer, Assessor, and other offices, looking at maybe everybody has their seasons with their workload. And maybe what we need to do is look at who can be cross trained and that for a couple of months they work in the Treasurer’s office while they’re real busy in May and in November, and a couple of other months they’re working at a busier time when you guys are doing reassessment, and maybe they’re working at the end of the year, beginning of the year in the Auditor’s office, but some people who are cross trained, and perhaps we don’t need 30 employees divvied out between the different departments. Maybe we could get by with just ten. So it might be a way of reducing staff by cross training some folks within the offices. And again, it’s a way that, I think we’ve got to break down those parochial barriers within our offices, think outside the box, and think taxpayers, number one, on how to save. So that would be the direction I’d like to give your office and the Auditor’s office, and the Treasurer’s office, in the future here, so that this coming year it’s going to be – it could be very, very tight. We’re looking at the state, a billion dollar shortfall, that’s going to come down to us and you know that. Because the super council up at Indianapolis has a tendency to sit down on us and cut our monies out. So anyway, we have a motion on the floor –

Councilmember Raben: Okay, next under Reassessment, under County Assessor, we have account 2490-1090-1972 down through 2490-1090-3540 for a total of $21,637. I’ll move for approval with a question.

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

Councilmember Goebel: I know we’re limited on time, but again, we have a request for Office Supplies for $5,000, and I think later in PTABOA, another $3,500?

Glen Koob: I think that stems from the Council not – I’m not sure about this, but you can tell me. I thought that you would repeal all of the other three townships? I’m not really sure about this, you can tell me, somebody surely can. But then now they’re asking for money back in that line item. I think you repealed it, and they never – the money from Knight, Center and Pigeon never rolled over to the County’s budget. Is that right? Sandie might know.

Glen Koob: Oh, this is Reassessment? Well, isn’t that where all of our office supplies and stuff has always come out of? It’s the Reassessment budget. Just our salaries always came out of the regular budget.

Councilmember Lloyd: Since it’s a reassessment year, I think we’re looking at spending that money out of the Reassessment budget. I mean, you could argue it is used for reassessment.

Glen Koob: Well, that’s where they always take our office supplies and things, Councilman Lloyd, they just take our salaries out of the General fund. They always have for 15 years or ten years, haven’t they, Sandie?

Councilmember Goebel: Glen, I’m not going in that direction, I’m just kind of curious, the need right now for $5,000 for Office Supplies without any real explanation except office supplies, it’s kind of vague to us.

Glen Koob: Let me say this, we’ve been given a new rule not to use so much paper because we’re running out of money in our Office Supply budget. So, you know, maybe that’s a Jonathan question. I don’t think that was addressed last week, was it? No. But that’s what it is. I think we’re running out of money in those line items and that’s – since all of us moved over, he inherited everyone and he didn’t get any money for it, I believe that’s where it’s coming from, Mike.

Councilmember Goebel: Yes, I understand. And you’re right, this should have been asked last week, however, it would be nice to know what some of these expenses are from this end.

Glen Koob: Okay, alright. Well, you know, I can ask and let you know. I mean, I’ll run downstairs when I’m finished and ask and come back and let you know. Alright?

Councilmember Goebel: Not necessarily, I just wanted clarification. If the need is there, if it’s not used, I guess it reverts back.

Councilmember Raben: The question is, and I may ask this of the Auditor, the other townships, outlying townships had Office Supply monies in their budgets that was approved, so have those funds been repealed or transferred back within the Assessor’s office?

Bill Fluty: My understanding is, he started out this year only with his County Assessor’s office supplies, and these are just to pick up, at that point in time, I think you wanted to look at what you needed and I think at that time you talked about, you thought you would be back to ask for appropriations.

Glen Koob: You know, down at the bottom of this form, it shows disbursements and the balance in all those accounts, so that last account has to do with the Pictometry, isn’t it? Councilman Shetler, remember the $110,000 a couple of weeks ago? Remember? That has to do with the Pictometry, I believe, I’m pretty sure. But you can see the disbursements at the bottom of that sheet.

Councilmember Lloyd: The Office Supplies is 2490-1090-2600, and the budget was $4,000 in that. And then, according to this budget book, last year, they spent $7,529 for Office Supplies out of the Reassessment. Of course, last year, you didn’t have all those township people in there.

Councilmember Raben: I think, I mean, Mr. President, I think that looks appropriate.

Glen Koob: What? Is that it? I’ve got two more things. I’ve got two more papers, you guys. I have one – oh, maybe this is for later on down the agenda. It’s for the PTABOA.

Councilmember Raben: Next under General Fund Repeals, we have the Center Assessor, Knight Assessor, and Pigeon assessor, along with Public Defender, I’ll move approval on all as listed.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, next under Transfers, we have the Clerk, Public Defender, Community Corrections, Superior Court, County Council, Reassessment/ PTABOA, and Drug & Alcohol Deferral Services. Mr. President, I’ll move that we approve all transfers as listed.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, under amendments to the salary ordinance, there is quite a few today, Mr. President, I’m going to move that we approve the amendments as noted and ask that they be entered into the minutes.

President Shetler: Everybody has received a copy of that? Anybody have any questions? I need a second.

President Shetler: It’s been seconded. Are there any questions? Roll call please.

Councilmember Lloyd: Mr. President? Last week we had a situation with the Chief Deputy of the Vanderburgh County Assessor. Since we’ve just left the amendments to the salary ordinance, is that, can we take that up at this time?

Councilmember Lloyd: Councilman Raben wasn’t here last week. I believe all of the Councilmembers should have a copy of the job description for the Chief Deputy to the County Assessor and we talked to Mr. Weaver last week about this and apparently, I think President Shetler was the one that noted the Chief Deputy was, I guess, paid at 80 hours of regular salaried time. This person is an exempt employee, approximate salary, like 46,920 a year. And this employee has been off, rightly so, on maternity leave and taking Family Medical Leave. However, when we asked the Assessor, Mr. Weaver, it’s been known that this employee was not in the building, but he was signing off the time records that she had been here 40 hours for two weeks. She was not in the building other than coming in maybe one day on Friday or part of a day. And Mr. Weaver indicated that this employee was working from home and fulfilling her eight hours of county straight time working from home, sending him emails, I guess making phone calls to the various people in the office. If the Chief Deputy would serve as the supervisor of the Assessor’s Office when the Assessor is out, or in other duties and I think questions were raised, how could the Chief Deputy be supervising 40 paid people in the office when they are not present? And if you look at this job description, which is very extensive, it’s four pages, a number of what the duties are, like on the first page you’ve got:

“Directly supervises and makes task assignments to Real Estate Deputy and Real Estate Clerk.

These type of duties, at least in my mind would not be, you would not be able to do them from home. So, I guess, the question was, there were several questions, but county policy regarding exempt employees taking work home, you know, is this employee, she’s certainly entitled to her leave based on maternity, but is she entitled to eight hours straight time a day when she is at home working? I mean, you can look at the other duties in the job description. I guess one question was to Mr. Ahlers, and this was brought up to Mr. Weaver, is this some kind of candidate for ghost employment? And I didn’t know if you’d had a chance to look at that.

Jeff Ahlers: Well, one of the issues with regard to ghost employment I guess would be whether or not the job duties were being performed. I suppose if someone is not working the amount of time that they’re billing to the county, that that may well be suspect under various laws. So that would be a question that would have to be looked into as to whether or not work is actually being performed or duties are being performed or not. When someone is accepting pay or whether someone is authorizing pay, the law also provides, also applies to the person authorizing the pay if duties weren’t being performed. So, I mean, those are issues that would have to be looked into. I did speak with one of the county attorneys who works with County Attorney David Miller, Ted Ziemer, and he is going to bring this up with the Commissioners as to whether or not to more specifically address this in the county personnel policy as to whether or not employees will be allowed to get paid to not be in the office or in the building. So I don’t think the Commissions have met yet or as of the last time I communicated with Mr. Ziemer, he has not had a chance to bring that to the Commission’s attention or had not received a response. So we’ll see where that goes in that regard. Obviously, one other thing from a legal standpoint, and a couple of you had asked me, was that if you look at Indiana statute 36-2-5-3, it’s very clear in that statute that the County Council controls the compensation and number of officers, deputies, and employees. And the statute specifically states that this includes the power to describe and classify positions and services. So certainly it’s within the ambit of County Council to determine what are the duties and the description and classification of employees, which would include the Chief Deputy. So certainly if you want to modify the classification you can, or if you feel it appropriate to notify the officeholders that you believe that the job classification or description is not being met, certainly you could do that as well, and would be free to adjust compensation or duties accordingly.

President Shetler: Let me kind of rephrase the question a little bit then. What you’re saying is, that an officeholder or an elected official may not arbitrarily change the job description of any employee without coming to the Council first?

Jeff Ahlers: That’s correct. I mean, County Council controls the classification description and compensation levels of all employees being paid by the General Fund.

President Shetler: Alright. Based on some of Mr. Weaver’s comments last week, he readily, I felt, admitted that the job description had been changed to accommodate work at home for this particular employee. That being the case, what would your advice be for us: to send a letter to him asking him to cease that kind of activity? Or for us to change the handbook and go from here? I’m concerned about the precedent that we may be setting allowing work at home.

Jeff Ahlers: Well, I would say, I guess you could address it on a number of different levels. You know, one level, of course, we asked the County Attorney’s office to approach the Commissioners which, typically, are the ones that promulgate the personnel manual to perhaps address it there. Certainly it’s within your authority to send a letter to the officeholder if you believe that there is an employee that’s not performing their duties according to their description and classification as promulgated by County Council, that would certainly be within your authority to do so. In terms of anything beyond that, I guess you would have to do some factual investigation as to whether or not there’s any other legal issues, would tend to be a little more factually sensitive and would probably need further inquiry beyond that.

Councilmember Kiefer: Mr. President? Does anybody – is she still working from home or is she back in? I didn’t know if she – Glen, is she back at the office now?

Glen Koob: I really don’t know, I’m at the other end of the hall and I’ve been doing trending, and I have no idea.

Glen Koob: That’s right. Okay, let’s go back to that. I can answer questions on that better. But I really don’t know. I know that she is here because she came in the office yesterday afternoon, so I don’t – I know she’s here.

President Shetler: I guess the question that might be on my mind then, since she’s the Chief Deputy, why wouldn’t she have been here today representing?

Glen Koob: She’s been off for three months or however long since she – I shouldn’t say three months, I don’t know how long she’s been off. You do, I’m sure, but she’s not up to date on some of this stuff. You know. We’ve been going over this, so, I mean, these are our issues. She’s not been in the loop, I should say.

Glen Koob: I mean, she makes up the things but he just had me come up today. She’s down there, call her.

President Shetler: Okay, I think part of what the whole argument was, is that I think she was paid the last eighty hours because she was supposed to be in the loop, but you’re telling me she was not in the loop.

Glen Koob: No, I did not tell you that. I did not say that. Let me make that perfectly clear. No, it’s not my issue and I really don’t have any – I can’t speak to that.

President Shetler: I think I heard Councilman Kiefer next and then Councilman Lloyd. Thank you.

Councilmember Kiefer: Well, I was just trying to discern whether or not, you know, she was still out and this was still an issue that was pressing us or if it was a one time thing and now it was something we just need to address with the Commissioners to tighten up the personnel policies on whether or not this is something...but it sounds like, if she’s still not there, then it might be an ongoing issue.

Councilmember Kiefer: Oh, okay. I’m just asking, you know, I thought you said you didn’t know if she was working back at the office.

Glen Koob: Yeah, she is working, he asked, I think Councilman Shetler asked me how long or somebody did and I said, I don’t know. I really don’t know. She’s here.

Councilmember Kiefer: Oh okay, so she is back at the office on a full-time basis.

Glen Koob: She was here yesterday, she was in my office yesterday afternoon seeing Shirley, I think.

Councilmember Kiefer: So it may be that we just need to get this, tighten up the policies with the Commissioners if she’s back – it sounds like she is.

Councilmember Lloyd: I was just going to further inform Councilman Raben since he wasn’t here, it was our understanding she had exhausted all her personal and vacation time. I had written down February 17, I don’t know if that was the date when she left or that was the date the baby was born. That’s the date she left? Okay, and she’s been employed approximately three years, I believe, she came in with Assessor Weaver, so I mean, the question is, is the county getting eighty hours of work or forty hours of work a week out of her at home? And my contention would be, I don’t see how we could. I don’t believe she would have access to the computer system as far as to make changes from home or do you know that?

Councilmember Raben: You know, just one brief comment, whether in this isolated case the person is or isn’t, or does have access, doesn’t have, it still takes us down a dangerous path because it’s not just with pregnancies, it’s surgeries, you know, elective, non-elective, you know, regardless. We’ve got 650 employees that all would like to, when they’re off for medical reasons or you know, whatever reason, to be paid. You know, and you just, once you get started, you know, it never ends. And, you know, if the person, once they use their time, as the policy states, once you use your sick days, your personal days, your vacation days, you don’t get paid. You know, that’s your incentive to get back to work. I mean, that’s the other problem. We’d have a lot of people that, you know, spend an additional month off that, you know, if they were still able to get paid for not being here. So, and then the other things are, too, there are some other reasons such as comp. issues. You know, if I’m working from my house and I trip and fall down my steps, you were paying me, I was at work. You know, we’ve got workman comp. issues. When they’re driving their automobile, you’re getting paid eight hours and you have an accident in your car because you ran down to the grocery while you’re on duty, I’m on duty. You know, in the business world, that’s certainly a lot of concern and, you know, that’s why a lot of businesses prohibit people to work outside of the office, so, or outside of the factory, or what have you. But we just don’t want to go here. I mean, hopefully, this is an isolated case and it’s not going on within any of our county offices, hopefully it hasn’t and hopefully it won’t ever happen again. So I don’t think we change a thing, I think we follow the policy to the T and, you know, the time off is, what you have coming to you is what you got, and other than that, get back to work.

Councilman Sutton: Last week I asked the question at the end of the discussion on this topic, okay, what’s the next step, where do we go from here, what’s going to be the issues that are going to be addressed and who is going to be involved with that? Government is a different animal and I think sometimes government, in terms of what it does, it operates very well, but there are other times when, you know, we have these issues that arise that we scratch our heads and wonder why we’re doing it a certain way or how come it can’t be viewed from a different perspective. In this case here, you know, as we know, each of our county offices, they can operate as their own, not only are they running the operations of their office, but they’re their own HR area, as well. They’ve got other functions. We don’t have a centralized human resources function for county government. When you look at it from a traditional standpoint of how things operate today. The Commissioners have a little bit of that HR function, we have a little bit from the standpoint, from a compensation standpoint, but really it comes down to each individual officeholder making decisions on their own about their interpretation of policy and their direction on how they’re going to follow certain things. And I’m not sure that that’s always necessarily in line with probably what the overriding, over arching policy may be for the county and perhaps maybe as we look at issues like this, I’m sure that there are other offices that probably have some, what we would deem as violations or infractions of our policy as a whole, but how do you monitor that? I’m not really sure what the next step is, whether it’s here before this body or the Commissioners in regards to that. One of the first steps I think would be very helpful is that each officeholder, if there was someone or something that could take leadership on this, and explain step by step what this personnel policy actually means and what they’re supposed to do, because there may be some violations of the policy just based upon just lack of knowledge and we would hate to see that. Whether that’s the issue here, I’m not really sure.

President Shetler: Well said, Councilman Sutton. I guess where I’m coming from, I think the next step would be to pass this along to the Commissioners, which is in the process of being done, for them to present this in the handbook so that the employee handbook reflects it. I think state law is also another integral part of this whole HR issue here, that this year some – and I think they do give us fairly clear channels here in that a department head or an elected officeholder may not arbitrarily change the job description on their own. They must come back to this body and request such a change. And that’s what keeps it so that the public understands what’s going on because this is the public place to do those kinds of things. And then it’s a different matter. I think Councilman Raben’s points about workman’s compensation and those kind of issues and questions are legitimate questions and I’m also thinking in terms of someone hearing about someone getting paid a forty hour work week and they say, well, I just saw them going out and picking up the mail at 2:00 this afternoon, and I saw them walking down the street doing this and doing that and stuff. It gets to be, you know, people complain about county and city workers anyway sometimes, you know, not maybe working as hard as they thought they ought to be working and stuff, not realizing that they’re waiting on concrete to be delivered or a chainsaw that broke or whatever may have happened, they see them standing there and they jump to conclusions right away that they’re standing around. But we just need to patch those holes up. I think it would be a good idea to perhaps send a letter to the officeholders explaining that this is – that the proper steps that one needs to take in the future and hopefully the Commissioners will tighten it up with the handbook. So I think there are some remedies to the situation that we have and that we can move forward from this point on.

Councilman Sutton: I would suggest you send that letter to all the officeholders.

President Shetler: That’s excellent. I agree. Alright, anything else? Yes, Councilman Kiefer?

Councilmember Kiefer: Yeah, well said, Mr. President. I do think that, you know, there’s two issues here. One is, the Council discouraging the use of working from the home, which I think from my understanding, there’s nothing illegal about this. I think Ted Ziemer had said that, you know, there was no clear definition of that in the policy, so that’s one issue. But the other issue is, like you said, changing what they do and changing that description, that job description. So there’s really two separate issues and I don’t see anything wrong with the Council broaching this conversation and discouraging the use of working from home as Mr. Shetler said. That’s a dangerous precedent that affects tax dollars.

Councilmember Lloyd: The other thing that was questioned last week, the Assessor, Mr. Weaver, he indicated that the Chief Deputy signed all the time tickets for Kronos or at least they verified all the employees in the office worked forty hours that week while she was not there. So, I mean, I think that’s a problem, but as we indicated, I guess, legally, if an officeholder says yes, this employee worked forty hours and signs off on it, then that’s the legal issue. She may be on the phone with the Assessor two hours a day or three hours a day.

Glen Koob: I have some input on that. As a department head, we have a calendar that we keep track of our own employees and match it with her, so that’s really not an issue. Each department head does that.

Councilmember Lloyd: Okay, but then they’re saying whatever you turn in is correct.

Glen Koob: Well, they swipe a time card, we just keep the sick and the vacation and the – something else – oh, the personal time. We do that. But they do swipe in a card and Bill gets it in his office. So that’s how, you know, they keep track of it like that. Everybody has a time card. And we keep track of the personal time, the vacation, and the –

President Shetler: Of course there are issues that deal with when someone leaves for lunch and swipes the card and then maybe someone else swipes it for them or –

President Shetler: – come back in and you have some verifiable stuff that she’s supposed to be directly involved in.

Glen Koob: They rat on each other. Just kidding. I know they’re watching. Just kidding.

Councilmember Kiefer: But then she, I don’t know that – again, this is good reason why the Commissioners need to tighten this policy up a little bit. But, you know, I don’t know that she has necessarily done anything wrong, because she’s been given permission by her person she reports to. She’s been given the okay to work from home. So, I mean, I don’t want to sit here and make all accusations about a certain employee when she’s been given permission from her direct person she reports to, to do these things.

President Shetler: No, I would agree. I think that the officeholder has probably overstepped his boundaries and what he is actually authorized to be able to do in this particular case of re-describing an employee’s job description. Alright, any other questions or comments about that?

President Shetler: One thing I want to bring up real quickly, since a couple of department heads are still here before we get into Mr. Deisher’s comments, is that for the 2010 wages, I’d like for all the department heads to set in a rate of zero for an increase in pay. I’m alarmed that, I think I heard on the news this morning or last night that the state budget looks like, just in the last month, maybe a 250 million dollar deficit. A billion dollars for the year that they may be looking or facing towards, their usual way of reconciling that and making things on an even playing field is to come back to the local level and put more burden on us. And I’m concerned about that. Now, by saying that, that’s not to say that we aren’t going to try everything we possibly can to try to come up with some kind of pay increase for every employee. As long as I can recall, we’ve done that at some level or another. But this year, for budget purposes because many are starting to inquire about it, I would entertain that we would ask them to submit a zero percent wage increase and that we could go from there at budget sessions. By then everything should be ironed out at the state level and we should know a little bit better where we stand and be able to see what money is left in the treasury after it’s all said and done and decide at that point what we’re going to be able to afford.

Councilman Sutton: Mr. President, I recognize this is your first year in the chair there, but we always vote on that.

Councilman Sutton: Okay, we take recommendations from the floor before we make a pronouncement or announcement about what direction we’re going to do, so I didn’t know what your –

President Shetler: I said I entertained, Councilman Sutton. I thought I made that clear. I didn’t suggest that –

Councilman Sutton: Well I guess hearing what you were saying is, you were saying to get the word out to the other officeholders, that this is what we were going to do. And I was just – it didn’t sound like a “we”, it sounded like a “me” as the way you were suggesting that.

Councilmember Bassemier: (Inaudible – microphone not turned on) that we will keep an open mind that way, if there’s no monies there and we set in an amount, that it won’t hurt their feelings if we have to drop it. I like the part you said, we will keep an open mind if there’s extra monies. I know the twelve years I sat on the Council, we always found monies in insurance or whatever. Just so we keep an open mind, if there is monies there, I’d like to see our hard-working employees get some kind of raise.

Councilmember Goebel: Will this directive also be issued to the organizations we have oversight for?

President Shetler: That’s a – given the last meeting, that’s a good point to bring up. I would think so, yes. If this would pass by the body that this recommendation that I’m making would go through, then yes, I would suggest that we do this to all supporting agencies.

Councilmember Goebel: Like Councilmember Bassemier said, I think we all would like to see pay raises for the employees. I don’t know if we’re really informed at this point enough, with what’s happening at state, I think it’s pretty obvious all revenues are down as far as operating government: income tax, property tax, even river boat gambling monies and things like that are down, so we’ve got to be realistic, but do we know yet, Mr. Fluty?

Bill Fluty: I don’t think we’re quite there yet and I think some of that is going to evolve here shortly. As you all know, we have caps that are coming up where we will not be able to collect beyond a certain point of one and a half, two and a half percent or three and a half percent, depending on the categories. After those, and this will be the first year for those caps. Once you see those caps this year, you can make a prediction of how they will affect you the following years and that will tell you kind of where you’re headed. And I think as soon as those tax bills are out, we actually will see what caps, what monies aren’t available to you this year. There will be a prediction to make for the following years, then I think you can make an informed decision on how you want to go forward. And then rate caps, they’re telling you to do two things, cut services, cut expenses or maybe look for another tax, because you’re not going to get it from property tax.

Councilman Sutton: Are you getting a general sense of when you think that information might be available to you?

Councilman Sutton: I mean, I’d think Councilman Goebel’s suggestion is a really good one. I think it would benefit us all if when you got that information, if you could give us, and normally it’s before we start our budget time that you will give some projections and some information about where we stand financially. I think, given the environment that we’re in right now, as soon as you know something, if we could have in maybe our regular meeting, a presentation from your office about the financial status, the standing of the county based upon the state information and the projections that you have. I mean, we got our first financial statement this month. That would not only help us from a budget standpoint, but help us really going forward for the rest of this year and then inform the public as well about the financial situation that we all are trying to operate under.

Bill Fluty: I think the July meeting I would have all that answered and we’d have the first six months of the year. I would actually know how those caps impacted us. We’d see our miscellaneous revenues for the first six months of the year. I think we run similar to other businesses, when the economy is like this, our miscellaneous falls, too. But I’d be happy to do that and I think that will give you a clear picture about this year’s budgets and budgets following.

Councilmember Goebel: President Shetler, you’re suggesting that departments begin now, though, figuring at a zero and they can just add to it without taking a vote here or – because I don’t know if we have enough information with that, but if they begin the process now, they’ve got somewhere to go. I don’t think anyone thinks we’re going to be able to grant what we have in the past, at this point.

President Shetler: That’s correct. Usually in May, the department heads start picking up the forms to start filling out and they usually want some guidance by this body to how much they should plug in for salary increases and my suggestion is, is that we look at establishing an ‘09 figure to slot in for the time being. By the time the budget hearings come around in August, we will have the information from the County Auditor, we will have known what the state is doing at the legislature level and hopefully have some kind of better feel on where the economy is at that time. And then I think as we get down and we start squeezing things together, we might be able to come up with an – as Councilman Bassemier pointed out, I would rather add something to it. I think we’ll have a whole lot more grateful people than we will if we have to end up taking away from. So that’s merely my suggestion and it’s up to this body to decide on that. Councilman Lloyd?

Councilmember Lloyd: And I did – I can’t speak for him, but I did talk to Councilman Raben about this and he was okay with it at this point. What we’re trying to do is give the department heads and the officeholders guidance so what the president is recommending is zero percent with the hope that the Council can find monies to grant some kind of general salary increase. But historically we’ve given them this, the first of May we’ve given them some kind of number to shoot for.

Councilmember Bassemier: Mr. President, I’d just like to add to what I suggested a while ago, there’s no way, if the employees do get a raise, it’s going to benefit me, because I’m not going to take a pay raise for my next three years or health insurance, so I’m all for the employees. But I’d just, for the money, if it’s there, that they would get some of it for a decent pay raise.

President Shetler: Alright, agreed. Okay, did – we’ve got a couple department heads here, do you guys want to make any comment or...

Glen Koob: I just wanted to know, I thought in the past, Sandie, that we had to turn in a small amount whether they allowed us to or not because if we didn’t turn it in, we weren’t allowed to raise it. Is that not true?

Glen Koob: Okay, but if we don’t turn it in, we don’t get it, right? If they would happen to change their minds?

Rick Davis: For those of you who don’t know, Rick Davis, County Treasurer. As an officeholder, officeholders did not take a pay raise last year and county employees did get a slight raise. Zero percent is easy to figure out. I can do that in my head. I can just give you what we had last year. I, personally, would like at least anywhere from one to 3 percent to turn in. You can always turn it down, but at least we’ve got a number out there, even if its just one or one and a half, or even 3 percent. Yes, the economy is really lousy right now and there’s still a lot of uncertainty, especially with the state of Indiana, they’re going into a special session, but at least give us the opportunity to put the numbers out there for you so that you can turn them down. A zero percent, that’s real easy, that’s a no-brainer. So at least let us give you a one, two, three percent and then chop them down once you get the request.

President Shetler: Of course there are several businesses out there and non-profits that have actually taken a cut, reduction, to save employees.

Rick Davis: And as with last year, as an officeholder, I’d be glad not to take a raise if my employees could get one. I think one of the officeholders last year said they make us look good and I wholeheartedly agree with that comment. If you want the officeholders and therefore the Chief Deputies, because they’re set in at 75 percent of our salary, if you want us to put a zero percent raise in for those two items, I’m all for that. But at least let me let the employees have a chance to increase their wages next year.

Councilmember Goebel: I don’t know what the numbers, how they’ll balance, I agree and appreciate Mr. Davis’ comment, but I think if we go to simply a 1 percent, it’s going to be much more beneficial for the people in the top than it will be for the lower levels as far as pay goes and so maybe just a number figure if we’re going down that low instead of a percentage. I don’t know –

President Shetler: And I think that’s all worthy of debate of how to maybe orchestrate that this coming year, which is, I guess, why I’m, I don’t want to say deferring it because the two and a half that we gave last year was not in concrete until we passed it anyway, so at this moment, I guess I’m suggesting that we kind of defer that on down until we have a lot more information and don’t get people’s hopes up too high here, I guess, is where I’m coming from.

Councilmember Goebel: I don’t think that hopes are going to be too high. I do think we have to do everything we can to retain workers. That’s all I have to say. Thank you.

President Shetler: Motion and it’s been seconded. Any further questions about the motion? Roll call please.

Councilmember Sutton: I’m just going to be real brief, I mean, we operate a year behind in county government, and we all know what’s been going on just within the economy and even at the budget period last year, I think we were very clear in making it known that 2010 would be a very tough year for Vanderburgh County. I don’t think we, in any way, well, we didn’t put it any other way, that 2009, if we were able to give a raise at that time, it would be a stretch for us for this year in 2010, it was looking highly improbable, so I’m going to go ahead and vote yes for this.

Councilmember Bassemier: I’m going to vote yes, also, you know my feelings. If there’s monies there, I know we’ll all work together and give our county employees a raise if we can. So until we find out the exact figure, I’m going to vote yes, also.

President Shetler: Yes. There being six ayes and no nays, the motion carries to plug in zero, and I’d give direction to Sandie to send out a memo to all the officeholders and department heads setting the salary at the 2009 level. And again, I do want to add some optimism behind that all and to say that we will make every effort to try to pass on an increase. Not promising any kind of big lofty increase, but you know, it may be modest, but that we will try to pass on something to each and every employee.

Tim Deisher: As the president said, Tim Deisher with BKD. I just wanted to report in on where we’re at with the process of updating the job descriptions. We have updated and finished the job descriptions for the Auditor’s office, Recorder and Treasurer’s offices. The Council had asked us not to piecemeal it, the job descriptions when bringing before this body, but do so whenever the job is complete. The next plan is for job descriptions in the Sheriff’s department and the Clerk’s office be updated. And we’re currently in the plan of gathering the organizational data to present to you an engagement letter to do so. We hope to have that by your mid-May meeting and be able to finalize that and get started on those offices by June. Other offices is the Assessor, looking, figuring out the courts and continue the process throughout 2009.

Councilmember Kiefer: Tim, when you guys write these job descriptions, and you may have described this before maybe last year before I was on Council or maybe even earlier and I just didn’t understand the process, but do you physically go out and visit each of these departments, meet with these employees, meet with the department heads? Can you tell me a little bit about your process for writing a job description?

Tim Deisher: Sure, it’s a good question. We first meet with the officeholder and whoever they designate that we work with just to set up the parameters, set out the expectations and set up the process. We then hold employee meetings so we meet with each of the employees of the various offices to convey the process. We have a form, different forms for COMOT employees, PAT employees and so forth, for them to then fill out to give us feedback and input as to what their duties are and things that have changed over the 20 or 30 years since they were last done. And the officeholder, department head, reviews their forms prior to us getting the forms and then we have a process of rewriting and we submit them to the officeholder or department head, the rewritten job description. They give us feedback as far as tweaking it and then they finally sign off on the job description that comes before Personnel and to Council.

Councilmember Kiefer: So all you are doing is looking at what is actually, what each employee actually does in order to write their description? There’s no part of this process that you discover, hey, if you did something a little bit differently, it might make it better for that position? You don’t make recommendations on job descriptions, you’re just merely recording what is actually happening?

Tim Deisher: Yeah. For the Auditor, I mean, he’s running the office and we don’t try to step in and make, recommend changes. We take what they’re currently doing and documenting that in their job description at the officeholder or department head’s approval.

Councilmember Kiefer: Yeah, and I understand that and appreciate that, I just am curious if there are things that in this lengthy and somewhat probably costly process of writing all these descriptions, if you can’t help but notice something that says, you know, if you would do this and that, boy, that would probably save a lot of money. But that’s obviously not your directive or your job, but I was just curious how that worked.

Councilmember Lloyd: The number of positions in the two offices that you’re getting ready to tackle, I guess the Sheriff, you’re already in the middle of and the Clerk is the next one?

Tim Deisher: The Sheriff’s we’re working on, we think we’ve got a pretty good number but having interaction back and forth. There’s 52 positions in the Clerk’s office for job descriptions.

President Shetler: Other questions, comments? Thank you, Tim. Appreciate the update.

Rick Davis: Thank you for having me this morning on short notice. I came here, I’m not asking for money, I’m here for a public service announcement.

Rick Davis: Yes. As you know, tax bills have not arrived in the mail yet and the phones the last month or two in our office and I’m sure in the Auditor’s office, as well, I talked to the ladies down at the switchboard, they’ve all been getting questions, people are asking when are my taxes going to be due? As you know, we went to a new property tax billing system this year. Due to that, we had some conversion issues that had to be taken care of in addition to changes in the state legislature. Its been very complex. We have the new software system, we are nearly complete. At this time, we are hoping to bill in late May with a mid-June deadline. And that’s if everything between now and that day goes well. There is still a few more complicated steps to go. But I did want to tell everyone watching on television today to be expecting a mid-June deadline. We have done the best that we can in our office to publicize that, especially for folks who are on a fixed income or social security, they only get one check per month. The last thing I wanted to do is give people the bare minimum, 15 day notice required by law to pay a 600 or $1,200 installment where they would only have 15 days to come up with that amount of money. So the newspaper the last three weeks has run two articles stating what I just said. The first one telling them to expect a mid-June payment deadline. And the second one, I asked people to budget, save a little bit out of that May check that they get, so when they get their June check and their bill for June that they don’t have to decide whether to pay their tax bill or medicine or food or clothing. So, the newspaper did a great job as well as some of the T.V. stations getting that word out. And we’ve also put that information on our Internet website. We’ve had a lot of traffic driven to the website and I also want to tell people that, even though they may only get the 15 day notice when they get the bill in the mail, we are doing our best to give them an additional two week notice to go to our website. We have the website, it’s basically ready to go. Unfortunately, it just has zeros valued in right now. We don’t want to unveil it and just have zeroes on the website. We want people to go to the website we have now which has the old information, so they could at least see what they paid last year and budget, even though they don’t have a bill now, they can kind of get a good gauge, at least in the ballpark, of what they spent last year. So we’ve left the old website up so people can look at their information from last year for budgeting purposes. Once we have the new bills, it generally takes two weeks for the printer to print the bills. During that two week period we will have a press conference, I hope that Auditor Fluty will join me and Assessor Weaver, because the three of us are a three-man team with property tax billing. We want to drive people to our new website so that they can see how much their bill is. Instead of 15 days, that’s a 29 day window, which is closer to a month. So I’m happy with that and they can pay their bill in advance using that information and they can pay that bill online. So public relations are very critical right now to give people as much notice as they can so they aren’t surprised or shocked whenever they get their bill at the end of May. And I appreciate you allowing me to come up and inform you of that. I also dropped off, each of you has a list here, it’s from the Department of Local Government Finance. It shows where all of the counties in the state of Indiana are. And for those of you at home, if you want this chart, you can go to www.in.gov/dlgf. On the side there will be a column that says Rates and other information. Click on Rates and at the bottom there will be a pdf chart of the entire map that shows where everyone is. If you’ll notice, Marion and Brown county are still white, they haven’t even started. They are way behind the curve and up in the northern section, Porter, LaPorte and St. Joe are in the very beginning sections. Posey County billed for last year about a month ago, so despite the changes with HB 1001 and despite the fact that we’ve had to convert to a new software system, I think we are in great shape when you look at the colors below where we are in purple. And I’d like to commend Auditor Fluty. Every Thursday at 1:00 we had what we call a Manatron meeting, property tax billing system meeting, and we’ve kept up on a schedule throughout this process with our printer, with the software vendor, with the Auditor’s office and the Treasurer’s office and also for Assessor Weaver. He started the race off and handed the baton off to Bill and the Auditor’s office, and the Treasurer’s office is waiting for the baton and we’ve almost gotten it. And it’s been a three-man team to get where we are. And I can answer any questions if you might have any. The main thing, I just wanted to be here today and anybody watching on television, let them know, expect a bill in late May with a mid-June deadline.

President Shetler: I’m not sure you were a bearer of good news or bad news, but anyway, we do appreciate it. I do have one point to bring up and Councilman Sutton last year worked pretty hard on trying to streamline and make the whole transition of receiving the tax money much smoother and faster and easier. And I know that we came to some conclusions with that and I am hoping, since there has been a change of guard there a little bit, that’s all still in play and –

Rick Davis: Well what – we have a new system and everybody, basically, at the counter has the ability, with a hand scanner, every bill will have a bar code on it just like when you go to the store and you swipe the item and it shows how much it is. We have a scanner at each of the desks and people who are paying by check, we’re going to let them sit down just like when you go do your taxes at H & R Block, and if you’re paying by check, people at the desk can scan your bill and you can write them a check and pay. If you’re paying with a money order or cash, you’ll go to the window. We’re keeping the staff all together in one location because of that. We have some technological advances this year that weren’t available last year, A. B, there was some cost with splitting the staff up. I’m sure you’re talking about Easy Pay where people were able to pay on the third floor. We’re keeping everybody on the second floor in the Treasurer’s office and, again, that’s because people in the office who did not have the ability to cashier last year, now have that ability due to the hand scanners, A. And B, I wanted to hesitate until I had more answers, but one of the local unions, the sheet metal workers, I’ve talked with them about donating a drop box for the front of the building. And I’ve talked to Dave Rector about this as well. And they’re in the process of getting some materials donated to them. It’s still very early in the process, but I did want to share this information with you because when people come in the last two weeks, they have to stand in a very long line at the Civic Center if they don’t want to drop it off at the post office. We are trying to get the ability to have a drop box in the front of the building where people can drive, drop their property tax bill in the box and continue on their merry way without having to find parking, walk five minutes, and have several blocks to come into the building or face getting a parking ticket. So I think that’s going to be a huge difference maker there as well in cutting down the number of people in our lines.

President Shetler: The next question that I had, how reliable is using last year’s tax information for this year? I mean, do you have any kind of predictability of that at all? Would that be a ten percent variance or five percent, or twenty or twenty-five percent?

Rick Davis: I think Auditor Fluty has a better handle on that than I would. For instance, property tax replacement credit, that was there last year, that’s not here this year. And there are probably some other funding mechanisms that may – well, it’s not apples to apples when you compare last year to this year. It would be very dangerous to do that, I think, at this point.

President Shetler: I mean, since we’re putting the word out to the public that, look at last year’s, I’m just saying, should they, is there a number that we might look at and say take that number times twenty percent and would be safe or...

Bill Fluty: Just looking at last year’s, if you remember last year, your homeowners with a homestead on file, their bill was cut in half. You can’t look to have that happen this year. There was $600,000,000 that the state actually applied across the state, all 92 counties for homeowners, that has been cut to $140,000,000 this year. So that alone will make a difference. There will be an increase is my guess just due to that alone, but every tax bill is figured on its own merit. You may have increases in assessed valuation, you have exemption changes, and you may have a decrease in your assessed valuation. But last year was quite a different year than any other year to look back on and say, because it was cut in half on most home owners. So just prepare. I think you’ve got some time, and those tax bills and that information is going to be coming out shortly

President Shetler: And then I guess the third question, since we’re a month behind in getting it out, is that going to affect cash flow or affect county government operations in any way, shape, or form?

Rick Davis: Well, actually, we’re right on schedule, almost within a week of what happened last year. A lot of people forget, last year taxes were due June 6, I believe, and mid-June is within a nine day period. So the staff, the Treasurer’s office and almost everybody from there last year is there again this year. They proved to everyone that they could have a June billing and collect the money and disburse it to the entities that live off of the property tax money and they did it last year. We have a new system, now there is some training that still needs to be done. Their confidence level as far as knowing the new system isn’t as strong as it was last year with the old system, but I’m hoping that, you know, going from a 1980's software to a 2009 Windows based software should, I’m hoping, make it much easier. It’s – I might want to note for the folks at home that can’t read this chart that you guys have, out of the 92 counties, only nine of them have a deadline right now. Only two of them have a May 11^th deadline. One has a May 29^th, two have June 10^th, two have June 12^th, one June 26^th and one June 30^th, so again, we’re still way ahead of where a lot of the counties are. You asked also about should people, do they think their bills are going up or down? You know, we don’t know that answer. But one indication I got in the middle of January when we were converting our data, in the past, people got their bill and it showed what they’re paying this year and it showed what they paid last year. Just two years of data. We were converting and we were in the middle of this conversion process when the Department of Local Government Finance said, this year we want you to add that third year. Now, that kind of tells me that they want when people get their bills and they see what it is this year and they see what it was last year when Bill was talking that, you know, it was really low last year. I think they want that third additional year in there so that people can see, this is what you paid two years ago, and it was really high. This is what you paid last year, it was really low. And I’m having a feeling it’s going to be somewhere in there. That’s just a hypothesis, it’s an educated guess, we don’t have any data to back that up. But when the DLGF gives you an edict that you need to add an additional third year in there, I think it’s to show a very high figure that was paid a couple of years ago when there were basically T.E.A. parties in Indianapolis two years ago and the mayor was thrown out of office because of high property tax bills. So I think that third year gives us a good indication that taxes might go up a little bit compared to last year, but again, it’s just a hypothesis.

Councilmember Lloyd: This may be for Auditor Fluty. It’s my understanding for city taxpayers, the city homestead where they had paid a homestead exemption, that’s either been reduced or eliminated. Is that right or not?

Councilmember Lloyd: Okay, because I know back in the old days, we always tried to fund that but that’s been – yeah, there’s no local so that’s another thing thrown into the mix that’s going to be a higher bill.

Councilmember Kiefer: Councilman Lloyd, do you recall, like, on a $100,000 home, for example, what did that homestead tax credit amount to in dollars?

Councilmember Lloyd: I don’t know in dollars. I think it was eight percent or something like that.

Bill Fluty: You have to remember this year, also, I think he said apples to apples. This is so much different with House Bill 1001. You also have a new supplemental homestead that a homeowner receives which is, you normally got 45,000 and now you’re getting another 35%. So these things, the prediction on this is – you’re adding some things, you’re subtracting some things and until all of the rates come in and we’re still waiting for one piece from the DLGF on the homestead that they are applying this year, I can’t answer those questions.

Councilman Sutton: Rick, under a normal circumstance from the time that the bills go out to the actual due date, isn’t it normally like thirty to forty-five days that we provide?

Rick Davis: Somewhere in there, yeah. If I may, I think I know where you are going.

Councilman Sutton: Well, I don’t know if you know where I’m going. Let me say it, then you can respond. I recognize that you guys want to try to move this forward efficiently and try to get this done and obviously the county depends upon the revenue, but I don’t know if there’s really much of a difference between getting, setting that due date in mid-June or late June, early July. I just think along this line: we’ve got a number of people in this community, you give them a two week window to get something paid, that’s very tight. And I know you recognize, you mentioned that they could go on the website, we’ve got a ton of people in this community, they’re not going to go on any website, they’re not going to get on and pay property taxes electronically as much as we may push it. There’s just a certain number of people – I mean, I carry a cell phone, Blackberry and everything else and I’m technologically savvy, but I don’t assume that everyone else operates in that same fashion. And I just think the two week window is much too short for this community and unless we’re talking about tremendous adverse affects of us not having that revenue coming in, whether it’s mid-June, late June, early July, I can’t see any reason why we can’t give our taxpayers here, especially since it was – we were the ones who made the technological changes on our software, why can’t we give them a thirty to forty-five day window to make that payment on the property taxes? I just think it’s the right thing to do. Two weeks is just too short.

Rick Davis: I do agree with that thought, wholeheartedly. And the reason why we have to do that is we don’t want the school corporation, the city of Evansville, Vanderburgh County, the Levee Authority, the libraries to have to borrow money in order to pay their bills and pay their employees and pay their light bills and pay their water bills. They need this money to operate on and we need to disburse what’s called settlement. We need to disburse that and generally that’s the end of June, July 1. And we have to have a period of time to let the checks that come in, clear. We don’t want to collect checks on one day, have the majority of them bounce and disburse money to these government entities and them not have any money to operate on. Too, I agree with the 15 day notice. I talked with Representative Gail Riecken and I told her, generally, if you’re one day late to 30 days late, you have to pay a 5 percent penalty. And I told her that because of the mandates that the state had made, that it’s not fair to the taxpayers to only have 15 days to make such a major payment. And she got a bill passed in the House, it passed 61 to 38, waiving the five percent penalty during the 30 day period. It was my idea, I thank Gail for bringing it forward, and it passed. However, it stalled in the Senate. It didn’t even get out of hearing because some of the Treasurers in other counties felt like it might be more work on their end in order to get it done. And also they were afraid it would delay billing further, due to software changes. I didn’t feel a software change was needed. I thought the five percent, thirty day penalty waiver could be handled manually. And it would only affect people with homesteads, it wouldn’t affect businesses and it wouldn’t affect escrow payments. It would only affect people who had a homestead exemption. So basically it was narrowed down to residences. Also they were worried that people would take advantage of that thirty day window and not pay, and then we wouldn’t have any money to disburse as well.

Councilman Sutton: But giving them a two week window, you’re going to increase the percentage of individuals who are likely going to pay late anyway and you’re going to increase the percentage of people who won’t make the payment at all until they’ve got the resources. And the majority of people who work on – well, we’re all on a fixed income to a certain degree except maybe for Tom, but for most people to say, okay, I want you to prepare this month for something that’s going to happen next month that’s going to be a large expense, that’s pressing them pretty tight. So I know you’re agreeing with me, but are we looking at ways that we can get that moved to the end of June?

President Shetler: Well, to follow up on Royce’s comment here and I don’t mean to tell you, maybe I don’t know if I’m asking or telling or suggesting a way, but couldn’t you take approximately 75 or 80% of those proceeds and advance, I mean, at a certain point in time, advance that because you’ve already collected, if June 10^th, for example, is your deadline that you get your money in, and allow that thirty days as he is suggesting, then you take 75% of that by the 21^st or 22^nd and pay that out, that’s holding back 20 - 25% of bad checks that could come along or for whatever reasons that you may have a problem and yet we’re accomplishing what Councilman Sutton is suggesting and we’re being, I think, pretty prudent on making sure that the money is in hand, the city, county and the rest of the government entities are taken care of because they’ve got their cash flow and don’t need to go right away to the bank, and then you can reconcile that come July 15^th or July 30^th or whatever.

Rick Davis: I’ve already had that discussion with the school corporation because they’ve already called me a couple of times wanting to know, when, when, when. And I told them that once we begin the billing process, we could start advancing them in increments. Right now, we’ve only collected about 400,000, $450,000 in advance payments for the year. And if they only get a nickle of that, that’s not very much money. It’s not enough, either. I also want to remind you, a lot of folks are on escrow and the banks already have that money in hand and actually they’re investing that money, and whatever the deadline is, when they get that property tax bill, they wait until that very last day to make that payment. And that’s, from the last count, around 26,000 of the tax bills are in escrow. So we will get that money on the deadline day regardless, but we can’t advance that money because it’s not in and the escrow, the banks will wait until the very last day to make that payment, because they invest that money and make money off of those investments.

President Shetler: I understand and I think the point is, though, that while that’s state law, the 14 - 15 day minimum that you’ve suggested, you have the option of extending that out a little further if you desire. So, and without, I’m saying that there may be what you’ve described on the calendar maybe 21 days at least, which gives a little bit of time here for folks, because and I agree, I think Councilman Sutton is suggesting that what could happen here is you’re going to end up with more bad checks and more of a situation, more of a problem that you’re creating as opposed to if you extend that out a little bit further, will cut down on that risk.

Rick Davis: Again, I have to be prudent financially for the county. I need to invest that money and if we delay it and money is not coming in, A, the newspaper even asked me, aren’t you not being prudent, you’re not investing the money, you’re not having it come in? I do feel I need to invest that money when it comes in, A. B, it’s very important for the school corporation, the levee, the libraries, the city, the county, to get that money to live on. I have to balance what’s best for the taxpayer and what’s best for the entities. And actually, if the government entities have to borrow, that’s not good for the taxpayer either because they have to pay that percentage rate that is -- (Tape changed) -- that’s why I’m here today. That’s why we’ve had two or three newspaper articles, one on the front page. That’s why it’s been on the T.V. That’s why we’ve got this Internet site. We are going to do a massive public relations campaign to give people as much time as possible to budget for this expense. And I don’t think that 15 days is enough, I really don’t. But it was done last year and the county proved with a 15 day window, that they could collect that money and settle. And I agree with you, I tried to do it the right way by going to our state representative and getting the law changed in order to waive that five percent penalty, and it was done in the House, but it didn’t pass in the Senate. And we have to move forward. Mr. Shetler was asking questions earlier, you know, talking about the economic outlook, we need answers and we need them soon in order for you guys to make decisions and in order for the school corporation to make decisions. You have to remember, the school corporation has many, many buildings and a massive capital project coming down the pike. The city may have an arena they want to build. We have to collect this money for the school corporation to do what they need to do. With the referendum that was passed overwhelmingly, I think it was over 70% of the people voted in favor of it. We can’t hold back any longer. We’ve got to collect.

Councilman Sutton: I’m not saying not collect it, I’m just saying you have to consider the source from which you’re collecting.

Councilman Sutton: And if the source is unable to adequately...and if you’ve got the discretion to move that date, I mean, why not move it? The school corporation and the other government entities who depend upon property tax revenue, it is not uncommon for school corporations and what have you all across the state, they take anticipation notes that they will actually, certain revenue will be generated and it does not slow down their operations, their projects. They move forward and if you’re talking about two weeks, three weeks, I can’t see how their projects will be delayed or – am I the only one? Is it just me maybe? Just...?

President Shetler: No, I hear what you’re saying and I don’t disagree that you – there’s some flexibility here.

Councilman Sutton: Right, I mean, it’s your – I mean, we don’t make the – we don’t set those dates. I mean, that’s your call on that. I’m just saying, just recognize the point that we’re trying to make here and I just don’t think, just looking at the community given a two week window, even with as much information as we get out there, that’s really – if Vectren dropped off a bill at my door saying it was due in two weeks, I’d think there’s a problem with Vectren that they need to address that. I just think most bills that we get, we get at least 30 days.

Rick Davis: And I also wanted to mention that we, every call that we receive from folks wanting to know their bill, we’ve written their email address down and as soon as we have that information, we are sending them an email, go to our website, and in some instances, we’re writing phone numbers down and calling people and telling them how much is owed whenever we have that information. It’s a list over a hundred people long right now.

Bill Fluty: Councilman Sutton, I can contact all the taxing units and see what financial, how this could impact them if we didn’t have a June 30^th distribution and that could play into Treasurer Davis’ decision on the length of time. Some of them are strapped. I know some of their debt services, they have to make some bond payments and they’re expecting to do it with this money. They may or may not have adequate reserves to do that. They may not. I don’t know that. I think the county is in good position and I think we could be fine and then we talked about advancing some money, if they could advance some money if we do have a debt – and I can get that information back to you to see if they are strapped or not.

President Shetler: Alright, thank you. Any other questions or comments? Rick, thank you for bringing that to the public’s attention and to our attention. It’s certainly an important thing to make sure the cash flow stays for all units of government.

Rick Davis: I plan to do the same at the Commissioner meeting tonight and the school corporation has already called three times wanting to know. They’re itching to –

(There being no further business to come before the Council, the meeting was adjourned at 10:45 a.m.)

1050-1130-0236	Court Screener	17,653.00	17,653.00
1050-1130-0237	Court Screener	17,653.00	17,653.00
1050-1130-0238	Court Screener	17,653.00	17,653.00
1050-1900	FICA	4,052.00	4,052.00
1050-1910	PERF	3,972.00	3,972.00
Total		60,983.00	60,983.00

1052-3994	Matching Grant	18,000.00	18,000.00
Total		18,000.00	18,000.00

3660-4197	New Facility Set Aside	340,750.00	0.00
Total		340,750.00	0.00

1090-1500-1090	1^st Dep. (Dep. Assr)	20,943.00	20,943.00
1090-1510-1090	Real Estate Deputy	16,813.00	16,813.00
1090-1520-1090	Real Estate Deputy	19,615.00	19,615.00
1090-1530-1090	Res. Real Estate Dep.	15,751.00	15,751.00
1090-1540-1090	Dep. Assr. PP/Data	14,319.00	14,319.00
1090-1550-1090	Deputy Assessor	16,504.00	16,504.00
1090-1560-1090	Real Est. Deputy	16,464.00	16,464.00
1090-1570-1090	Prs. Prop. Coordinator	18,125.00	18,125.00
1090-1600-1090	1^st Dep. (Dep. Assr)	20,020.00	20,020.00
1090-1610-1090	Real Estate Deputy	19,065.00	19,065.00
1090-1620-1090	Real Est. Deputy	16,504.00	16,504.00
1090-1630-1090	Dep Assr Mobile Home	14,479.00	14,479.00
1090-1640-1090	Dep. Land Appraiser	19,615.00	19,615.00
1090-1650-1090	Dep. Assr. Business	14,479.00	14,479.00
1090-1660-1090	Dep. Assr. Deeds	13,168.00	13,168.00
1090-1670-1090	2^nd Real Est. Deputy	13,215.00	13,215.00
1090-1690-1090	1^st Deputy (Dep. Assr)	15,044.00	15,044.00
1090-1700-1090	Real Estate Deputy	18,191.00	18,191.00
1090-1710-1090	Dep. Assr. Bus. PP	13,824.00	13,824.00
1090-1720-1090	Real Est. Trans. Clerk	19,184.00	19,184.00
1090-1730-1090	Dep. Assr. PP	13,168.00	13,168.00
1090-1740-1090	Real Est. Deputy	14,319.00	14,319.00
1090-1750-1090	Dep. Assr./Bus. PP	15,751.00	15,751.00
1090-1760-1090	Real Estate Dep.	18,125.00	18,125.00
1090-1900	FICA	30,456.00	30,456.00
1090-1910	PERF	29,859.00	29,859.00
Total		457,000.00	457,000.00

1090-4114	Office Renovations	70,000.00	0.00
Total		70,000.00	0.00

2490-1090-1972	Level II Certification	7,500.00	7,500.00
2490-1090-1900	FICA	574.00	574.00
2490-1090-1910	PERF	563.00	563.00
2490-1090-2600	Office Supplies	5,000.00	5,000.00
2490-1090-3130	Travel/Mileage	2,000.00	2,000.00
2490-1090-4220	Office Machines	3,000.00	3,000.00
2490-1090-3700	Dues & Subscriptions	1,000.00	1,000.00
2490-1090-3540	Maintenance Contract	2,000.00	2,000.00
Total		21,637.00	21,637.00

1110-1110-1110	Center Assessor	25,560.00	25,560.00
1110-1120-1110	Chief Deputy	21,389.00	21,389.00
1110-1130-1110	Real Estate Deputy	19,615.00	19,615.00
1110-1140-1110	Residential RE Dep.	15,752.00	15,752.00
1110-1150-1110	Dep. Assr. PP/Data	15,752.00	15,752.00

1110-1160-1110	Deputy Assessor	16,504.00	16,504.00
1110-1170-1110	1^st Dep/Ofc Coord.	18,126.00	18,126.00
1110-1180-1110	Pers. Prop. Coord.	18,126.00	18,126.00
1110-1190-1110	Dep. Assr./Deeds	15,894.00	15,894.00
1110-1900	FICA	12,754.00	12,754.00
1110-1910	PERF	6,146.00	6,146.00
Total		185,618.00	185,618.00

1130-1110-1130	Knight Assessor	25,560.00	25,560.00
1130-1120-1130	Chief Deputy	25,507.00	25,507.00
1130-1130-1130	Real Estate Deputy	19,065.00	19,065.00
1130-1140-1130	1^st Dep/Ofc. Coord.	16,504.00	16,504.00
1130-1150-1130	Dep. Assr. Mobile Home	14,480.00	14,480.00
1130-1160-1130	Dep. Land Appraiser	19,615.00	19,615.00
1130-1170-1130	Dep. Assr/Business	14,480.00	14,480.00
1130-1180-1130	Dep. Assessor Deeds	14,480.00	14,480.00
1130-1190-1130	2^nd Real Est. Deputy	13,216.00	13,216.00
1130-1900	FICA	12,463.00	12,463.00
1130-1910	PERF	6,830.00	6,830.00
Total		182,200.00	182,200.00

1150-1110-1150	Pigeon Assessor	25,560.00	25,560.00
1150-1120-1150	Chief Deputy	19,115.00	19,115.00
1150-1130-1150	Real Estate Deputy	18,191.00	18,191.00
1150-1140-1150	Dep. Assr. Bus/PP	13,824.00	13,824.00
1150-1150-1150	Real Est. Trans. Clerk	19,184.00	19,184.00
1150-1160-1150	Dep. Assr. Pers. Prop.	14,480.00	14,480.00
1150-1170-1150	Office Coordinator	15,752.00	15,752.00
1150-1180-1150	Bus. PP 1^st Deputy	15,752.00	15,752.00
1150-1190-1150	Real Estate Deputy	18,126.00	18,126.00
1150-1900	FICA	12,239.00	12,239.00
1150-1910	PERF	5,663.00	5,663.00
Total		177,886.00	177,886.00

1303-1670-1303	Public Defender	18,786.00	18,786.00
Total		18,786.00	18,786.00