The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 5^th day of May, 2010 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 8:32 a.m. by County Council President Russell Lloyd, Jr.

President Lloyd: I’d like to call to order the May 5^th Vanderburgh County Council meeting. Could we have the attendance roll call please?

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

President Lloyd: I’d like to ask everybody to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, and ask Councilman Kiefer to lead us.

President Lloyd: You have minutes from April 7^th that were sent to you under separate cover. Is there a motion to approve?

President Lloyd: Okay, motion Mr. Shetler, second Mr. Sutton. Any discussion? All those in favor please signify by saying aye.

President Lloyd: Appropriation ordinance, we have none on item five. We’ll move to item number six, transfers, Weights & Measures, and I’ll ask Mr. Shetler to take that.

Councilmember Shetler: Yes, we have people here from Weights & Measures and does anybody have any questions?

Councilmember Raben: Not on the transfer but, Loretta, take just a minute and kind of brief us on where we’re at on –

Loretta Townsend: Moving? Hopefully, we can get in maybe next week. And the reason for the transfer is, see, we’ve been at the Executive for, well, a little over twenty years and our rent has never topped or even gotten to $500 a month, which we’ve been lucky. Now there’s a lot of them, maybe some of you all up there didn’t want to pay money to a private firm. That included our utilities, water, electric, trash, whatever goes along with it and everything else. Now we don’t pay rent, but our utilities is going, I’m positive, is probably going to eat us alive just like they do at home. So I’m asking to transfer what’s left of the rent and not pay any more to the Executive Inn, so that may be, we might be on the street tomorrow, I don’t know, and transfer into Utilities, so at least I won’t have to come back, which I will have to, and ask for that much more money. You know, at least that 300 or close to $3,000, rather, will go toward utilities. So, now as far as the move, we hope maybe next week. We’ve been driving them crazy running in and out of there, but they’re going along as fast as they can because, you know, it took months for them to get their stuff out of there so we could even tell that there was no receptacles, we couldn’t tell about the furnace, we couldn’t tell about anything because there was no electric in the building. So there’s where we stand. We’re still sitting over here but I don’t know how long.

Loretta Townsend: Yes. Hopefully, well, it’s going to be for the utilities, paid toward the utilities.

Councilmember Sutton: The building itself, Loretta, the new building that you’re going into. What additional things are needing to be done to make it ready for you guys?

Loretta Townsend: Hopefully nothing since, I mean, now that we’ve got the electric going, I think the water was supposed to be turned on yesterday. I’m still trying to find out what they’re going to do about the telephone. I know there might be a time, a day or two in there that we’re going to be without service one place or the other. I’m trying to keep that from happening, but I can’t get them to call me back from the – this afternoon I’m going to lay for them.

Councilmember Sutton: So are the Commissioners taking care of the actual move itself? How is that being –

Loretta Townsend: I’ve been told that, by one of the Commissioners, that they have somebody who will move us, and I hope he is right.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, we may have a Councilman who may be able to help you with that.

Loretta Townsend: I’ll take it from anyone. Yes, I thought about that. The name wouldn’t be prominent with a moving company, would it? I don’t know, we’ll do something. You know, we always manage somehow to land on our feet. I don’t know how we do it, but we do.

Councilmember Sutton: Well, I hadn’t heard just how the items were going to be transferred, so just wondering what the plan was.

Loretta Townsend: Yeah. Well, the plan is that he better come through. And if not, like you said, there are certain people that, very civic minded that, he’s bowing his head right now and hiding.

Councilmember Raben: No, but thanks for the info and, as always, I’m sure you’re going to do it as inexpensively as it can possibly be done. You’re pretty good at that.

Loretta Townsend: Well, I tell you what, and I imagine, I shouldn’t say this but you know what, hey, me and Annaliesa are too old to get on a corner. I mean, there’s just no way we can make up for the utilities. I mean, no, you guys are going to have to come across, that’s it, you know.

Councilmember Shetler: I might suggest that we end up, or we can take these one by one or we can do it all in one group which is what we typically have done on transfers unless there is something controversial or a question that arises about one of the particular subjects. But it’s your pleasure.

President Lloyd: Well, there is a late transfer, we may want to take that separate. It’s related to the repeal request because I think we’re going to need to deny the repeal or are we going to take the repeal and then change it to a transfer? But anyway, you want to just take a motion for all the transfer requests?

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, the motion would be to approve all of the transfers and that would be the Weights & Measures, Public Defender, Health department, and then also the late request or do you want me to hold off on that one?

Councilmember Shetler: We’ll just do the first three and then we’ll wait on the late.

President Lloyd: Okay. And we’ve got two others that we haven’t had discussion on. Any discussion on the Public Defender or the Health department?

President Lloyd: We can probably just take the Public Defender with the late transfer.

Councilmember Shetler: Well, if we’re going to answer the question now, we probably ought to at least have Steve and (inaudible) come up. Judge Heldt is also here.

Steve Owens: Judge Heldt is here as well and I know he has to get back to court so if we could have him also address the Council at this time.

Steve Owens: The 8,317 is transferring from a part-time line item, salary line item to fully fund the full-time salary line item. As you may recall, we incorporated two part-time positions into one full-time. We have filled the full-time position, in order to fully fund it, we need to transfer that amount to the full-time line item.

President Lloyd: Questions? Mr. Goebel? Oh, I thought you held your hand up. Okay, well, let’s do Health department and then we can move on to the other section. Any questions on the Health department from Gas & Oil to Contractual? There is Mr. Heck.

Councilmember Shetler: Gary, do you have anything to add to it on the contractual?

Gary Heck: No, just that we have some requests to actually do some cleanups and we would appreciate the ability to do those cleanups, but we need to transfer the money to do it.

Councilmember Shetler: Is that going to affect your Gas & Oil? I’m starting to see some prices rise out there.

Gary Heck: Not at this time. We went from full-size pickup trucks to Ranger-size pickup trucks with a six cylinder in the gas because they’re used primarily within the county and our gas mileage has improved tremendously. So I think we’ll be okay.

President Lloyd: Okay, other questions? Okay, Mr. Shetler made a motion for these three. Is there a second? Or, Royce, you seconded, okay. Any other discussion? Roll call vote please.

Steve Owens: This sort of relates to the withdrawn repeal request. This is coming from the same line item as the part-time salary that we had for the Public Defender. As you’ll note, probably all of you know, we now have a pending capital case. Rather than repeal this money and then come back and ask for an additional appropriation this month, it was suggested that we just move to withdraw the repeal and transfer this money to the capital line item, and that’s what we’ve done. That will get us started probably for at least the month, the end of April and part of May.

Councilmember Kiefer: Can you give us an idea, like what the total long-term costs are going to be to the county, just out of curiosity, on defending this death penalty?

Steve Owens: We’re really early in the process. Best guess would be somewhere between 4 and 600,000.

Councilmember Bassemier: Sir, will this be probably tried in another county, and if it is, will it cost us more to go to another county?

Steve Owens: Councilman, again, we’re real early in the process. It could be tried in another county, it could be that we go to another county and get a jury and bring them back here. I don’t know yet.

Steve Owens: Obviously, if we have to venue it to another county and we take everybody to another county, yes, it’s going to cost us a little bit more than it would be if it was tried here.

Steve Owens: No, we get reimbursed at 50% of whatever the expenditures that the county has. I think that the last case we had including the appeal cost is somewhere north of 600,000, and the county has received 50% of that.

President Lloyd: Okay, but from your end, you guys are going to start working on this, this month, right?

Councilmember Goebel: Yes, I was going to ask about reimbursement as well, but you covered that. For us to prepare a little bit as far as the expenses coming up, has a trial date yet been set?

Steve Owens: There is a trial date currently set – it’s April the 11^th of next year. We have a number of pre-trial conferences and readiness conferences scheduled at different intervals throughout this year and early into next year.

Councilmember Goebel: Will you need the bulk of the funding prior to any of that time period or is it just going to –

Councilmember Kiefer: Again, another curiosity question. Will – does the defendant have any assets? Will any of those assets be taken to help pay or offset these costs? I mean, does he have any assets at all? Obviously, he’s using a public defender so, but, I meant, it would be nice to know that all of his resources have been used up to help pay for a part of the defense.

Steve Owens: He’s been found to be indigent by the court, which basically means he doesn’t have enough assets to fund a capital case.

Councilmember Kiefer: Yeah, I didn’t know if there was anything to offset any of those costs, so...

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, we talked a little bit about this and need to engage Judge Heldt a little bit in this conversation as well. But I don’t feel like it’s my role to sit back and micro manage the cost and the daily expenses, what we may incur if it goes out of town. What I’d rather see us do is maybe to get together and establish some sort of budget that makes good sense that we can, you know, live on and I’m talking basically about the cost of attorney fees and etcetera and per diem and we’ve gotten involved in that before here on Council, and I don’t know that we need to get into the nitty gritty of how much they spent for a specific lunch or how they did for a particular dinner. I would rather, something, we look at it in a broader scope and maybe we just establish a policy on that. So, I don’t know if you’re thinking on, if you’ve had a chance to look at that at all, but anyway, I’d feel more comfortable myself, rather than sitting down and trying to look over somebody’s shoulder and say hey, you shouldn’t have spent $2.50 on this or that, or what.

Carl Heldt: Although I sign the orders to pay the expenses, I really see it more as a function of the public defender and the Council to – because I don’t know, I don’t look over their shoulders either as they’re doing things and I really think it’s a function of the Council and the Public Defender to talk about those things. I think it’s a reasonable request and I’m sure Mr. Owens will work with you on that, I would think.

Steve Owens: As we talked, I believe it was Monday, we don’t have any problem with that. Mr. Dodd and I don’t have an issue with that. I think Judge Heldt and I have a difference of opinion as to the responsibility of overseeing the cost of litigation. Criminal rule twenty-four provides that the court bills are to be submitted to the court. It has no function for the Public Defender’s office. Now, while we have an office, death penalty litigation is sort of outside the realm of our normal, day-to-day activities. We would anticipate that what we would do is, we will submit monthly billing statements to Judge Heldt. He would then approve those or disapprove them in whatever respect he felt appropriate and then we would take and process those bill claims through the death penalty line item in the Public Defenders office. The rule provides for a minimum amount of hourly compensation to the attorneys: it’s $106 per hour. So we’re stuck with that in terms of compensation. As far as all the other and sundry things of experts and investigators and all of the things that kind of go along with it, we’ve put together that team. They sort of bill what they bill and it’s difficult in this diminishing field, since there’s fewer death claims filed, to find the number of people that we need to work on the case. So we’re sort of at the mercy, there’s fewer people doing this kind of work. But we certainly have no problems, if this case were to go out of town, in establishing some guidelines so that we’re avoiding those sorts of questions that came up in the Wilkes case.

Councilmember Shetler: Perhaps we can work on that then and get that together so that we’re all on the same page on that.

Carl Heldt: In hearing what Mr. Owens says: that’s apparently, he feels more comfortable with the court being more involved and I’ll be happy to do that, and be active with the Council if they wish and Mr. Owens, in crafting a budget and more closely parsing the expenses as they come in.

Councilmember Shetler: Well, perhaps all three of us could get on page on that so that –

Councilmember Shetler: You bring up another question: if there is a full-time person in your office that’s going to be a part of that team or any other team that would come up in the future, and being full-time and salaried by the Public Defender’s office, does that charge, not necessarily the 106, but whatever rate it is, does that come back, then, from the state, that 50 percent come back to the state into that department then to cover that?

Steve Owens: Yes. All of the time that’s spent on the capital case will be reimbursed to the county at fifty percent.

Councilmember Shetler: So if a staff attorney from Public Defender is on it, it actually helps reduce the cost to the taxpayers in that respect?

Steve Owens: Yes, essentially, because the time that the staff is going to be spending on the capital case, and the staff attorney being me, is going to be billed against the capital case at $106 per hour, and that’s going to be, obviously, covered by part of that.

Carl Heldt: Let me ask Steve this question, though. Will your time on this case require hiring additional attorneys to take your caseload for other cases? I don’t know, and that, because I don’t want to mislead the Council.

Steve Owens: As it stands right now, what we’re doing is, we’re maintaining all of the functions that we have had all along. We have to keep a minimum or a maximum caseload under the guidelines. We’ve reduced our caseload to that. There may be a small reduction in the number of cases that I would be assigned over a particular period of time. We don’t know what that affect is going to be at this point because we don’t know whether that’s going to be any cases or several cases. The limit is 20 open other public defender cases at a time. That’s about what I normally carry in any event. So I’m going to be still doing the administrative duties and doing the caseload that I’ve been doing and if it becomes necessary to retain additional counsel, I’ll advise the Council of that to make the appropriate adjustment.

Councilmember Shetler: This is probably getting off the subject a little bit here, but you bring up a good point or an interesting point to me, and that is, I know that to be selected as a co-attorney on a death penalty, that you’re limited to the amount of cases that you can actually have, that you can actually be working on. But are you limited at all in the time that you spend in being involved in a supervisory capacity?

President Lloyd: Just one other question and this is like trying to predict the future. What are stock prices going to do, what is going to be the tax law next year. But based on your experience, the length of time for the trial, any ideas? I mean, it will be at least a year, right? By the time you get to trial and have a sentence?

Steve Owens: Well, we have a trial date set in April of next year. I think that’s probably fairly realistic at this point. We have not received a case file. We’re very early into the procedure. We don’t know what kind of experts we may need or how long we may need to get them. But right now I think we’re all working towards the concept that we try that case in April of 2011. Assuming there would be a conviction, there would have to be a sentencing within thirty days after the trial.

President Lloyd: Okay, and for the Council’s point of view, the bills would flow each month, basically.

Steve Owens: Yes. I anticipate that what we’ll have to do is come in for the Council meeting next month, ask for an appropriation. It will be a large appropriation. It will not be a request that will fully fund the case throughout it’s pendency. We are required by rule to bill every thirty days. We will do that and then that money will come through the normal payment process against the death penalty line item. We have to file our appropriation request within 120 days after the claim is paid. The Public Defender Commission meets four times a year, so those claims that are filed before their meeting will be taken up at that Commission meeting.

President Lloyd: Mr. Goebel, you’re the liaison on this on the Public Defender office, so we appreciate any information you can gather.

Councilmember Goebel: I’ll be glad to do that. Steve is easy to work with, so we’ll continue. Hopefully, we can keep costs down. Mr. Fluty, do you know what our current balance is? I don’t have my spreadsheet with me for the General fund.

Councilmember Bassemier: Now when you’re going to bill us, once a month come before us, are you going to do the same thing with the state? Will you be sending them a bill? Will you be getting anything from the state or when it’s completely over?

Steve Owens: No sir. What will happen is, we will submit a claim to the court once a month. We’ll submit our monthly billing statement. When that’s approved, we will then submit those on a blue claim form for payment from the death penalty line item. What happens is, within 120 days after the payment of that claim, we have to file a request for reimbursement with the Public Defender Commission. They will take that up at their quarterly meeting. So it’s possible that there will be claim – the reimbursement request filed that actually won’t be heard by the Public Defender Commission for a couple of months, depending upon when it hits because they only meet once a quarter. They will approve those at their quarterly meeting. Once it’s approved, then they will send that to the state entity that disperses the money and then there would be a reimbursement check coming in, in due course.

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, I’d be remiss if I didn’t really pat Judge Heldt on the back here. The two attorneys that he selected to be heading up the team are local attorneys and I know he picked them because of their expertise and their qualifications. But I think he was also being cognizant of the fact that, you pick attorneys from out of town and it’s going to cost us greatly for the travel expenses back and forth and the lodging and the food and the whole business. And so I think he was keeping that in mind, as well. And I applaud him for picking expert attorneys that can handle the case here locally that can keep our costs down as well. So I do greatly appreciate that. Thank you.

President Lloyd: Questions? Comments? Obviously, I mean, this person deserves the best justice that he can get and we appreciate the work you gentlemen are doing on that. So, any other questions? If not, we’ll take up this late transfer. Is there a motion?

President Lloyd: Okay, motion Mr. Shetler, second Mr. Bassemier. Other discussion? Roll call vote please.

President Lloyd: Now we’ll go to item seven, repeal. I’ll give that to Mr. Shetler.

Councilmember Shetler: Basically, it’s to repeal the request that was made earlier. And this is basically so that we can start looking towards, because of the death penalty that’s going to be coming up and a new request that’s going to come forward for next month. So we don’t need a special motion for it?

President Lloyd: Should we set it in at zero or just withdraw? Just withdraw. Okay, so we need a motion to withdraw.

Councilmember Shetler: I make a motion that we withdraw the request from the Public Defender’s office.

President Lloyd: Okay motion Mr. Shetler to withdraw the request for repeal, second Mr. Kiefer. Any discussion? Roll call vote please.

President Lloyd: Item nine, new business. Sheriff request to fill vacancies. Is the Sheriff here?

Eric Williams: Good morning. Sheriff Eric Williams. I believe you all have a copy of my letter and subsequent amended letter with my request and I’d be happy to answer any questions, but they’re fairly self-evident.

Eric Williams: It was the addition of the court screener position to my original request.

President Lloyd: Okay. Any questions for the Sheriff on that? I guess one question I have, these are not all immediate vacancies, so as your letter stated, some of these would be hired over time.

Eric Williams: Well, the seven Confinement Officers are vacant now. The three Deputy Sheriffs will be vacant by the end of this month, I believe or they’re vacant now as of today. The Court Screener is vacant as of now and the clerical position is vacant as of now. As far as my hiring schedule, we won’t hire the Confinement Officers for a period of time. We’re going to go through the interview process, but I’ve held off doing any kind of interviews pending your willingness to let me replace them. And then Deputies, we’ll start the interview process and backgrounds, and we probably won’t hire those until late summer.

Councilmember Raben: I think we need to go ahead and approve the request. The other thing, the other delay that can happen, there’s so much training involved with these positions that, you know, if we delay it 30 or 60 days, it’s – and the training process is months.

Eric Williams: The first year of a Deputy Sheriff is basically, they’re in training that entire year while they’re on their probationary period. Confinement Officers, substantially less than that, but still a significant period of time to get them up to speed where they can work the floor inside the jail on their own. The Court Screener, depending on who you hire for that, that doesn’t take that long and then the Clerk, it’s clerical duties, answering the phone. That position actually is one of the receptionists in the front lobby of the jail, you know, handling, taking money from visitors, checking visitors in, checking attorneys in, answering the phones for the facility.

President Lloyd: Second Mr. Sutton. Any discussion? Questions? Roll call vote please.

President Lloyd: Yes. And we do appreciate, there’s a lag time here and that will help the county’s budget.

Eric Williams: I will pledge to you that I will drag my feet as long as I can and not compromise safety and security.

President Lloyd: Right. Absolutely. Thank you, Sheriff. Seven to zero, approved.

President Lloyd: Item B, Public Defender, request to fill vacancy. We already approved it. We approved the money, this is for the position to go from the two part-time to the one full-time.

Steve Owens: No. This – we have a full-time Executive Level II position that became vacant. And what I’m asking is permission to fill that position. The money is already in that line item. There may be, we’re anticipating that we’re going to fill this with a person who is coming in from out of the county. So there may be some slight savings, but it should not require a new appropriation.

President Lloyd: Okay, this is a letter dated April 15^th that says, consider my request to hire a replacement for line item 1303-1640, right?

Councilmember Shetler: You said out of town. Will we be considering their experience and their seniority from their past employment as they come in here?

Steve Owens: Well, yes. I mean, I do. I consider the experience and their past employment. Under the salary ordinance, as I understand it, if they’ve never been employed by the county, and they’re coming in as a new attorney, they come in as a Step 1, Executive Level II, irrespective of their past experience. The only way I could get them any more money than that, assuming they’ve got many years of experience, is to go before Job Study and then try to work my way through that. I don’t anticipate doing that.

Councilmember Shetler: No, no, no, well, that was going to be part two depending on – but thank you. You’ve answered it. Thank you.

Councilmember Sutton: Now we’ve received a letter on the 15^th, Mr. Owens. Now, you say you’ve got a candidate. Was this advertised for? I mean, did you –

Steve Owens: Yes. We’ve advertised the position at various law schools, various web sites that are accessible to about a hundred law schools. We’ve had a number of resumes come in.

Councilmember Sutton: So you’re looking for kind of someone new as opposed to predominately -- how much response did you get from your –

Steve Owens: We’ve had lots of responses. I think we’ve culled that down to about ten or eleven that we’re interested in interviewing.

Councilmember Goebel: Steve, and this will be cost neutral as far as the budget?

Steve Owens: Yes, I would think it’s going to be cost neutral, perhaps a slight savings. If we’re bringing them in as a new hire and they’re actually going to come in less than the person that was in that job.

Steve Owens: Not that I can see. And I think it’s cost neutral all the way around.

President Lloyd: Second Mr. Bassemier, motion Mr. Shetler. Any discussion? Roll call vote please.

President Lloyd: Item C, Health department, two employees request, one vacancy fill. Mr. Heck is here. Questions for Mr. Heck? I’ll ask a question. The two employee requests would be grant line funded?

Gary Heck: It’s a replacement for a Deputy Registrar in our vital records. This position was used to partially fund the accrued payout last year of a long-time county employee. We weren’t able to fill the position before the hiring freeze went into effect, which we would have done given the opportunity. So this is just a request to fill that position. We certainly need it in vital records. It’s the division that generates the most service fees for the Health department and they’re, I don’t want to say woefully short-handed, but they’ve been working at their absolute limit and with long-term employees, when you have some vacation time coming up, I don’t have anybody to help cover that office. We’re getting additional requests and there’s additional new items that they’ll be required to do that the state legislators passed that’s part of paternity affidavit applications on the web based system in the future, and we need to get somebody in place and trained before all of that happens.

President Lloyd: So they handle birth records, death records, birth certificates, paternity, a lot of that has to do with where you receive fees for those duplicate records.

Gary Heck: That’s exactly correct. I think in the sheets I provided you, you could see that there’s been some major increases over previous early years when we matched the fees that – right now, every birth that occurs in a county, it’s that county that issues the certificates, same thing with a death, whether they’re a resident or a non-resident. When the Women’s Hospital opened in Warrick County, a significant number of Vanderburgh County residents, their physicians are associated with that facility. The births went to that facility. We’ve made up some of that money, if you will, in that they issued a combo certificate for $10 and we were just issuing a single certificate for five, so we matched that. A combo means you get a full-size and a wallet size. It, in essence, it treated all Vanderburgh County residents the same, whether they gave birth in Vanderburgh or in Warrick County. And then in addition to that, there is paternity affidavits, paternity affidavits upon marriage, there’s a variety of things that our staff does that’s the initial step of establishing paternity, that will establish that before it – it doesn’t have to go to court if both parties are in agreement and both parties agree and sign those affidavits. That takes a lot of time to do those paternity affidavits.

President Lloyd: On this list, what year was the Women’s Hospital open for –

Gary Heck: It started about, I think it was 2002. There was some, we didn’t have our fee increase here until 2006. And that’s when you’ll see the big jump. Another thing that happens through some anomalies, you’ll see it went up one year and then down the next. Some major employers, at one point, decided for hospitalization purposes that every employee needed to be able to prove dependents, their dependents, and required birth certificates. And so, we had a major influx of requests for birth certificates in order to – folks to keep people on their health insurance.

Gary Heck: There’s two in there now. We were set up for three and it’s that third one that we desperately need.

Councilmember Shetler: How many employees do you have within the Health department that are not tied up to any kind of federal programs or state programs specifically that are in the Health department?

Gary Heck: There’s about 45 that are county employees and the rest are, the other 20 or something are all grant employees. Unfortunately, we’ve looked at trying to see if we could do some realignments and some things, and it just, with everything that’s going on with not only the H1N1, but there’s three new immunizations that’s required for all six through twelfth graders for school next year. And well, right now, I’m conducting, today we’re having a clinic out at Central High School. We’re just swamped trying to keep up with all the regular things that go on in the Health department and this is a major, the vital records is something that you need. A birth certificate is a primary source document for Social Security, for the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. If anybody, when you renew your drivers license, you’re going to be required to take a birth certificate in. If you have a child who is going to get their drivers license for the first time, one of the parents has to take their birth certificate in, as well, under the new state laws. And we’ve just been overwhelmed in trying to keep up with the death certificates, it’s just been very, very difficult to do it. We’ve tried to look at how we could switch staff around, and you’re robbing from Peter to pay Paul the whole time you do it, and it just hasn’t worked out very well for us.

Councilmember Shetler: Well, I guess my concern is, and my interest is that, in particularly larger departments that, where we can cross train, and get people that are working, and I know there’s no particular day that people are going to make a rush, that you can predict that they’re going to come in for death certificates, birth certificates on Mondays or Wednesdays. I know there’s no particular time of season there might be, but I guess somewhat, unfortunately, I’ve had to go in and pick up certificates more recently and been in there a few different times, and I haven’t been in a situation any of the times I’ve been in to feel as – it was, you know, a four or five minute wait. I mean, it wasn’t, you know, real serious in my opinion. I didn’t know if it was a situation here where this being a basic clerical function, if the line did get long out there, there wasn’t a matter of somebody just ringing a buzzer or calling back and saying hey, I need some help, Jan, if you could come up for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes.

Gary Heck: Under the old days, that might have been possible, but with this new web based system that’s in place, you have to be certified by the state and we have those other lines in all of our other offices as well. You were just fortunate that you were there at a time when it didn’t require extensive research through the old handwritten birth and death books that are all stored in back of the Health department. It takes sometimes up to an hour to research all of the data needed to prepare a certificate. So if there was a way that I thought we could do this, otherwise, we would do it. We discussed it, or it was discussed I should say, at the Board of Health meeting, and this recommendation is really coming from the Board of Health because they don’t feel we can not have somebody in this position full-time anymore.

Councilmember Shetler: Are you saying that the people in that office that do the certificates must be certified through some kind of training?

Gary Heck: Well, they have to go through the state and be, they have to pass, it’s an on-line test through the state. We can choose someone to go in and do it, but they’re not allowed to process a record until they pass that on-line web test. It’s, whether it’s called a registration or certification or state vital records approval, I don’t have an exact terminology for it. But they’re not able to do it until they satisfactorily complete all of that training that they have on line in order to pass that certification.

Councilmember Shetler: I know that you’ve come in for a couple of different requests and stuff, have we actually eliminated any personnel in your office over the last eighteen months?

Gary Heck: The only ones that were eliminated, or well, there has some been changes and there has been some positions that don’t exist today that existed previously. This is the only one that remains an unfilled position. There has – I guess we’re one lower in strength than they were before the hiring freeze started where a position, in essence, was given up in order to accomplish – and that’s one of the nurse practitioners is what I’m recalling, is where a nurse practitioner position was eliminated.

Councilmember Shetler: And that’s a more technical type of field where I do have a little sympathy to make sure, particularly with the H1N1 and all that other stuff that goes on out there. And that’s what we’re all about.

Gary Heck: Well, we’re still waiting for the personnel review for our job descriptions. We’re operating under 1993 job descriptions. That review has never taken place at the Health department yet. And I don’t know that that would necessarily help us eliminate any positions unless we somehow restructured a lot different than the way we’re operating today.

Councilmember Sutton: A couple of questions: you were in here last year, Gary, oh spring or so, and you had, oh, four or five different requests on a restructuring program that you put together for us, if you can recall back then, when your former position that you held no longer exists. Would that be a correct statement?

Gary Heck: It doesn’t exist as the Chief Operating Finance Officer, but we reverted back to a Finance Officer position.

Gary Heck: There’s been some cost savings but I wouldn’t have termed it as eliminating a position. There was some restructuring, yes sir.

Councilmember Sutton: And wasn’t there, didn’t you realign the number of nurses as well in terms of their responsibilities? Maybe I’m...

Gary Heck: Well, we were able to fill a nurse position in order to help do the – there was a public health nurse position that had been vacant and we were able earlier this year to fill that position by – given permission by the Council, which we truly appreciate.

Councilmember Sutton: Now these grant positions that you’re requesting, what is the length of time for these grants?

Gary Heck: Each of the grants varies. This one happens to be on a federal fiscal year so it operates from October 1 through September 30^th and it will, so this particular position would go through the end of September unless it’s renewed, and it’s been renewed for the past twenty-five years.

Councilmember Sutton: And the county is responsible, how much is the county paying toward both of these two, these grant funded positions?

Councilmember Sutton: Okay. Now I was looking at, okay, on your other request, on this vital records position, now I recognize that the Women’s Hospital has had an effect on, like I said, just the number of requests that you’ve got, but you had the big increase in 2006, --

Gary Heck: That was when the, that’s when the birth certificate and death certificate went from five dollars each to ten dollars each.

Councilmember Sutton: Okay. But really, it’s beginning to see a decline in the number, in the amount of income since 2007?

Gary Heck: Well, there’s been a decline in income, but not a decline in the work. That’s where these affidavit numbers and things that come in as well. So until someone goes on Social Security or needs to have copies of certificates, they don’t come in to get a certificate. And so, you could have a large number of births or deaths, but until a certificate is required, there’s no need for someone to come in and actually get one. If somebody is trying to get a passport, somebody is going to register for school, somebody is going to get a drivers license, somebody is going to make a change in Social Security, all of those things require a primary source document. It doesn’t have to be a birth certificate, but the birth certificate is the number one certificate that each one of those other agencies request.

Councilmember Sutton: So we’re working on almost a year that you’ve been without that vital records position. How have you guys been able to – what are you doing to continue to keep the requests filled and the responsibilities taken care of?

Gary Heck: I try to have a part-time – we did have a part-time person following with what, we had a clerk that we were able to train, but then we also had a grant, lose a funding position in the sexually transmitted disease area. And when we looked at – and the person that was in there was a clerk that was under the Health department’s grant and we did without as long as we could in the other area, until the H1N1 activity started to go down. And when activities increased in those other clinics, we had to shift this person back over there. And I don’t see where that’s going to end now. So we’re at a point where I’m down to just those two regular full-time employees in there.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, just so I’m clear, we’re talking about three positions. Two part-time that will be funded by a grant.

Gary Heck: Yes sir. There’s two part-time positions for a grant under WIC, and then one Health department to fill a vacancy that’s been in place and the vacancy was created primarily because we had to fund the accumulated payout last year.

Councilmember Raben: Okay. What did you quote earlier? You have approximately 65 employees or –

Gary Heck: There’s about 65 full-time equivalence when you count the county funded positions and all of the grant funded positions.

Gary Heck: Well, in the full-time equivalent, there’s four part-time people under the Health department budget, not counting the summer extra help for the mosquito, and in the other grant positions, in WIC, there’s probably three or four part-time positions.

Gary Heck: Probably sixty-nine warm bodies in all of our various roofs that are working part-time.

Councilmember Raben: You know, I, listening to the conversation, you know, that is a rather large office, sixty-nine people –

Gary Heck: It is three different locations: dental clinic, the WIC Fulton, and then the Health department.

Councilmember Raben: And I know there is different abilities, for sure, and there’s different responsibilities and I think some of it, there’s some seasonality involved. So, you know, I would think with an office of, that large, of 69 people, we could figure out a way to reconfigure the office to make up for one person. That just doesn’t seem like that’s a major hurdle. You know, as an example, I mean, you’ve got folks that are assigned to mosquito patrol, you know, that probably, that’s seasonal. You know, I don’t think I got bit by a mosquito in January. I mean, again, you know, there’s enough seasonality flow within a department that big, that I would think we could make up for one person.

Gary Heck: Well, we’re on three different floors and there’s a – and I would have to go back and look, but there’s eleven different reception points when you look at all the various divisions. Trying to cover all of those different spots, it’s very, very difficult with the staff that we currently have because you’re trying to stay open 8:00 to 4:30 for people to come in to be able to conduct business. And when you have that many various reception areas, it’s difficult to do with the staff that we have.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, and we might, you know, as we get further into the agenda, and again, this is something new that I’m still having a difficult time swallowing, but, you know, the travel requests, maybe, you know, I’m sure that’s got to put a burden on your staff because it seems like there is a lot of travel within the Health department and, you know, I mentioned last week, you know, where we can send one, I hope we’re sending one and not two or three.

Gary Heck: And I think I assured you last month that that exactly is what is happening. And unless it’s part of their job requirement where they need to attend this training because it is a job requirement, and that’s primarily in some of the grants, that’s exactly what we do. We only send one. But if it is a job requirement and if they are in a grant, we’ve continued those requests just because it’s part of the overall grant agreement that says we’ll send our folks to those trainings.

Councilmember Kiefer: Gary, you were talking about all those different receptionists, how you have multiple receptionists, --

Councilmember Kiefer: Do they do more than just receive people in to the office?

Gary Heck: Of course. Uh-huh. Yes sir, they do. They, and for instance, in environmental, they not only receive people into the office, they process the permits for septic tanks, they do all of the licensing and permits for all the restaurants that are conducted here. They take dye fees to take and do a dye of the septic to see if there is a problem with the septic tank. There’s, they all have multiple duties assigned to those particular offices. So, like I say, we look forward to the job review because I think it’s going to find that a lot of our folks jobs have changed since 1993 and they’re doing a lot more today than they were doing back in 1993.

President Lloyd: Mr. Kiefer, you’re personnel chair, so maybe you can talk to Mr. Deisher about that. I know they’re on the list. I think he was still working on the Sheriff’s department last time I checked. Mr. Goebel?

Councilmember Goebel: Gary, I think people who have come before us for replacements have come with the very same message each time, that they’re asking people employed to do more work with less help and evidently you’ve gotten by, so, I don’t know, maybe with the job descriptions or something we might have to, my feeling is, we might have to wait on that position. The grants are, I think, a no brainer, but maybe we could take a little closer look at it after Mr. Kiefer and Mr. Deisher get involved, too. I don’t know what the consensus is here.

Gary Heck: I can tell you that I believe there is going to be a much longer wait for some of the services and I don’t know how to answer all of their questions because I’m trying to do the best I can to relay to you the fact that we’re doing the best we can to try to keep that wait limit as short as possible. Right now we have the funeral directors drop off their certificates before 10:00 and we try to get them processed by 2:00 that day to get back to them. I don’t know that we’re going to be able to continue to do a same day service on that. And it’s an important, and that’s because we have to enter this data into two different systems because the state’s new web system doesn’t meet the State Board of Accounts’ requirements for doing the totaling of all the receipts. It will eventually, but we’re not there yet. So Mr. Shetler was very fortunate the day that he was there that he didn’t have a much longer wait because there’s some people that have to wait an hour to get their certificates and it’s because of the amount of time that it takes to process somebody who was there in front of them.

President Lloyd: You probably had a warning bell: uh-oh Councilmember, hurry up, hurry up.

Councilmember Shetler: Well, it’s actually, I’ve been in there about five different times and I really hate to use an example particularly if it’s isolated in my case there, but, and other times that I did. But we’re also talking about backroom activity that can take place when funeral directors are dropping off things and they can pick it up at a later point in time. That, to me, indicates that minor stuff that someone else can be certified to do, I would think within the building, and, I mean, it’s, again, it’s kind of the thing we’ve been asking others to do. At this time, what I would really like to do is make a motion to separate this question and make a motion that we approve the two WIC employees that, so I’d make a motion that we approve that and then we can make a motion on the other position in a second.

President Lloyd: Okay, so your motion is to approve two new employees with the grant request?

President Lloyd: Okay, motion Mr. Shetler, second Mr. Kiefer. Roll call vote please.

President Lloyd: Is there a motion, will we need to formally do the motion, and then have an up or down vote on the request to fill the vacancy?

Councilmember Shetler: I will formally make the motion to approve the request for the full-time position.

President Lloyd: Okay, motion Mr. Shetler, second Mr. Sutton. Any discussion? Roll call vote please.

Councilmember Sutton: I’m going to vote yes, but just want to make sure we are really on course with going through and getting these positions updated and really get a chance to evaluate the strengths of each office where we can begin to evaluate responsibilities and more changes can be made because I think it really hamstrings our process here and what we’re able to do, decisions we can make on whether a position can or cannot be considered vital to county business. But yes.

President Lloyd: Okay, I’m going to vote yes. It fails four to three. And I guess one other point that wasn’t brought up, all the Health department fees, they’re reviewed annually by the Commissioners, some of those are set by state law but, obviously, I think we want to encourage the Commissioners in areas where we can increase those fees, I think it would be a worthwhile exercise as we see the revenue kind of going up and down. Alright, thank you.

Councilmember Goebel: Can I make one comment prior to Gary leaving? I was just going to compliment you on – I was just going to ask one quick question on H1N1. Has anyone received a vaccination in recent months on that situation that you’re aware of, or is it pretty much gone?

Gary Heck: Oh no, they still – are you saying, do we still offer the vaccinations –

Gary Heck: Yeah, they step into our office four days a week. We have walk-ins on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays from 8:00 until 3:00 and on Tuesdays from 10:00 until 5:00. And there’s someone who comes every day on those days and receives them. They’re still being offered at the Central High School immunization clinic today from 3:00 to 7:00 and tomorrow from 3:00 to 7:00, in addition to the three new required immunizations that will be required for all sixth to twelfth graders starting next year.

Councilmember Goebel: And you’re also going to offer those for Vanderburgh County’s students at the Health department itself?

Gary Heck: We will during July, August and September, every Tuesday will be a walk-in day just for back to school immunizations. And we’re also looking to do these with schools as well on-site at schools and not just the public schools, but any school in Vanderburgh County, parochial or whatever.

Councilmember Goebel: I want to commend you for that because that’s an extra burden you’ve got placed on your backs, too. Thank you.

Gary Heck: Yes, we’re over 47,000 individual H1N1 vaccinations that have occurred in Vanderburgh County so far, and they’re still counting, and we’ll continue to do them as long as vaccine is available and people need them. Thank you.

President Lloyd: Okay, we’ll go from warm bodies to warm and cold bodies: here’s the Coroner.

President Lloyd: Any questions for Ms. Groves? Request to fill vacancy. Part-time employee, correct?

Annie Groves: I’ve lost two for health reasons just recently because their backs, their doctors would no longer allow them to do the lifting that we have to do.

President Lloyd: Motion Mr. Kiefer, second Mr. Bassemier. Roll call vote please.

Councilmember Shetler: Real quickly, not to belabor the point, but the increase on the part-time wages, is that helping to retain other part-time or –

Annie Groves: They still pay more in Posey and Warrick than we do here so, you know, but I do have people that have applied, so I do have people that I can interview, so I’m hoping that we can get someone. Our death rate has just gone up so sky high, that, you know, if you go to work for Warrick County, you get paid to be on call. Well, you’re not going to do anything because they’re life-flighted here to Evansville, and the same with Posey. We get them all life-flighted. If you go on-call in Vanderburgh County, you’re going to work all night. So if you have the chance to work in Warrick and sleep all night for more money than in Vanderburgh, I don’t blame them.

President Lloyd: Item E, Superior Drug Court, request for summer grant intern. Please state your name.

President Lloyd: Okay. Any questions on this request? Summer grant intern. Just roughly, what would the position be doing?

Debra Mowbray: Be helping do some drug testing and also doing some paperwork and learning some interviewing skills that I do when I go over to the jail.

President Lloyd: It sounds like a worthwhile request. Any discussion? Is there a motion to approve?

Debra Mowbray: It’s a grant from the Indiana Department of Corrections and for part-time work it’s 16,000, but it covers our weekend people and one person that does drug testing.

Debra Mowbray: Starting like the third of June until school goes back into session, which is the end of August.

President Lloyd: Item F, Auditor request to replace part-time employee. There is a letter dated May 3^rd from Auditor Bill Fluty. Any questions on that? He’s going to come around to the podium. Questions? Mr. Kiefer?

Councilmember Kiefer: What’s the part-time position do? I mean, what would be their daily activity?

Bill Fluty: They are helping with the exemption department. Also we have the new pink form I think many of you filled out. I think we probably have around 15 to 20,000 that we’re going to be processing. So they will be helping with some of the daily work where some of the other people can go ahead and process those pink forms for the homestead verification. I’ve had this position since January that comes in a couple of times a week and works. She’s leaving in May and this is just to fill out the rest of the year with a new person.

Councilmember Goebel: I think this Council is in a state of denial, so that’s just my feeling on this position.

President Lloyd: Okay, motion Mr. Shetler, second Mr. Raben. Roll call vote please.

Councilmember Goebel: I know this is part-time and I’m sure it’s worthy, but reflecting back on a prior decision earlier for a replacement, I’m going to vote no.

President Lloyd: Item G, Judge Heldt, Steve Owens regarding death penalty, we’ve already taken that up when they had the appropriation request. Item H, travel requests, I’ll turn those over to Mr. Shetler.

Councilmember Shetler: We have several requests from the Health department. I don’t see Gary here any longer.

Councilmember Shetler: You all should have had them in your files. I know one is going to Ft. Benjamin Harrison. Most of them appear to be, there is one here for a longer stay for a couple employees and that’s down the road here, I think, it looks like to me in December is what that is set up for. There is one scheduled for Leavenworth, Indiana. I don’t know if I have that – I probably do in this somewhere. I’d be happy to try and answer any questions the best I can if we, a couple of these, because of the dates, look like they could be put off a little bit. Some of it’s May 10^th and May 11^th, though, 12^th.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, I wish he were here. There is, as an example, Leavenworth, there’s zero cost. I don’t know if that’s an oversight. And then we have Bedford, Indiana, training for two individuals at zero cost. And they may be zero cost, I’m not sure. I just wonder if that’s a typo or –

President Lloyd: We can instruct these officeholders, if you have a zero cost travel, we don’t want to see that come to Council. I mean, why would we want to see that? They could send their people out every day all over the country and if costs zero, I mean, that’s their issue if they can serve the taxpayer or not.

Councilmember Raben: I would call attention to one. The STD/HIV prevention training in Cincinnati. It’s not a state called meeting, and we are sending two people, that’s kind of the point I made earlier. We should be sending one, particularly to meetings that aren’t state called and that person should report back when they get back and help the others, you know, pass on their knowledge that they gain to the others. I have a question that quite honestly I’m not real sure so I’m going to direct this to the Auditor. On the ones where we get reimbursement where there are grants, I guess first, are we paying this travel out of our general fund travel line or is this coming out of theirs?

President Lloyd: If you wanted to cut the one health department in half to go for one employee, I guess you have the liberty to do that. But that’s money in their travel budget as of right now. They have funds sufficient to do that. The department head is saying, hey, both these people work in this field, we need to cover it. So, I mean, I’ll leave that to the pleasure of the Council.

Councilmember Kiefer: Like he said, they may be required as part of their duty to attend that.

Councilmember Shetler: Right. I think the question that Councilman Raben is really directing towards, and I understand if we needed certification and keeping your continuing education going on, but if that part’s not necessary, the question is, can we afford to have two or three people out of the office. It may not be really costing us any more per se except riding along in the car and it may be a county vehicle and that’s why it’s zeroed out. But at the same time, we lose four warm bodies out of that office when we could be using those folks for doing other things. And I think that becomes the overriding question here. Do we need to be a little bit more judicious on that?

President Lloyd: I guess these are questions we would want to ask the officeholders and department heads. Apparently, the day you went for that death certificate, they weren’t traveling, they were all there. Other questions? Why don’t we make a motion to approve. If there’s any change in the dollar amounts, we’ll entertain that.

President Lloyd: Okay, there’s a motion and a second to approve all travel requests as submitted.

President Lloyd: Okay, we’ll just go with – okay, there’s a motion for five different travel requests from the Health department, all within their budget. So Mr. Shetler made a motion to approve. Is there a second?

Councilmember Shetler: It’s a request to go to the state conference, the Association of County Treasurers. I guess my only question to Rick would be that, one thing that could be very helpful for people involved in that, it can be a small price to pay for them as ambassadors of our county to help try to get that conference located in Vanderburgh County within a reasonable amount of time. And those kind of things do generate quite a bit of revenue for us as far as tourism is concerned and I would be in favor of us being involved in that.

President Lloyd: I believe under Z Tuley, when she was Treasurer, I thought we brought the Treasurers here one year.

President Lloyd: Okay, motion Mr. Shetler, second Mr. Raben. I’ll just ask for all those in favor, signify by saying aye.

President Lloyd: Okay, motion Mr. Raben, second Mr. Sutton. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye.

President Lloyd: Item number four, County Assessor, two travel requests. Is there a motion to approve?

President Lloyd: Okay, Veterans Service, I believe there is a question from Mr. Kiefer.

Councilmember Kiefer: Yeah, I noticed on these travel requests you have two different individuals traveling to the same location on the same dates and they’re each asking for mileage, which my thought is, why can’t they ride together? You know, they’re going to the same location, same hotel and yet we’ve got two different cars traveling there, so they’re each asking for mileage.

Councilmember Sutton: Councilman, I think, even further, the question is, do both need to attend?

Councilmember Sutton: It’s not stated called, I mean, it’s just kind of an annual conference they have but...

Councilmember Kiefer: So anyway, you know, I guess, one thought is, they could ride together and then, I don’t know, does the county have any pool vehicles that they could utilize?

Councilmember Kiefer: Well, maybe they could use that and ride together because I doubt they’d spend $300 on gas to get up there and back.

Councilmember Shetler: You know, we just got this in, I think, Friday, so my recommendation might be that we wait until the end of the month. This is – I know they’re going to have to put some reservations in, I understand, but really we’re getting this in at the last minute here and maybe we need to set up some kind of guidelines where people, department heads and etcetera get these in six to eight weeks in advance here, which is kind of tight on this.

Councilmember Goebel: Sometimes those meetings are not called until or notification doesn’t come out until later than that.

Councilmember Sutton: And you also kind of put yourself in a risky situation with your lodging, if that’s the place where the conference is taking place. And being in Indianapolis, yeah, there’s tons of hotels but –

Councilmember Shetler: I would doubt if this was something that was called at the very last minute. I have a feeling that this was probably well in advance and I agree there are times that that comes up and we could make that allowance. But, as I’m looking through this, we’ve got a lot of requests in here that are taking place on May the 10^th, May the 12^th, May the 13^th, you know, that three or four day notice, if we have any questions about it, you know, they’re kind of out of luck, they’re putting themselves a little bit at risk here. But my guess is that this particular request has been probably in the works for some time and we just got word of it. And I think there seems to be, from what I’m picking up here, some concern about it.

President Lloyd: If we, I’m sitting here trying to do this on a calculator, but if we subtract one of the mileages, the total request, $729.56, if you subtract 152.80, $576.76. Do we want to approve that and then ask them to come to the meeting rather than – we normally don’t vote at Personnel & Finance, so that would fall to the June meeting.

Councilmember Kiefer: I’ll make that motion to change it to the amount you stated.

President Lloyd: Okay, we have a motion and a second for 576.76. And I would, I’m trying to think, that department is only two people in there, so that would be everybody in that department traveling, which is questionable as well. So we’ll send a note to Veterans Service and ask them to come to our next meeting and maybe explain that. Okay, we have a motion Mr. Shetler – oh, Mr. Kiefer made the motion, second Mr. Shetler. All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Councilmember Raben: Just one general comment before we move on to the amendments. You know, several years ago, Ed and Royce, I think you’ll recall at one point we maybe passed a resolution or maybe it was simply stated by the president or something that the county was not going to reimburse or pay for non-state called meetings. Do you remember that? And we worked within that for a few years.

President Lloyd: Maybe we can try to pull that from the archives and present a newer version at the next meeting.

Councilmember Sutton: Yeah, if we went back and just started looking, just even this year, the amount of travel and the expense toward that, it begins to add up.

President Lloyd: Okay, item number ten, Amendments to Salary Ordinance, turn that over to Mr. Shetler.

Councilmember Shetler: I think everybody has received a copy of the Salary Ordinance amendments. The Sheriff department, total of twelve employees to amend the salary ordinance to approve hiring of eight new Confinement Officers at $34,948 apiece. Amend salary ordinance to approve hiring of two new Deputy Sheriffs at $43,222 base salary. Amend the salary ordinance to approve replacing the Post Commend Receptionist at an initiation rate of $25,742, after six months the step one salary would be $26,961. Amend the salary ordinance to approve replacing a Court Screener at a start rate of $29,697 and step up after six months of $31,111. Public Defender, setting the salary at, that’s line 1303-1630, setting the salary at $52,894 for a Step 1 and after six months – that is that, okay. And then the Health department, approving the two employees to come out of the WIC program, at a rate of $12.9759 per hour, that’s account 213.4. Amend the salary ordinance to approve the hiring of a part-time employee in the Peer Breast Counselor up to $9.50 per hour to be funded by the WIC program as well, that comes out of 213.8. Coroner, allow hiring a replacement Deputy Coroner at the rate of $9.25 per hour. Superior Court, amend the salary ordinance to allow the hiring of a summer intern up to $8.00 per hour from a grant in the Drug Court Division. And Auditor, allow hiring of a part-time employee replacement at a rate of up to $8.50 per hour. That’s the motion I’ll make for approval.

President Lloyd: Okay, motion by Mr. Shetler, is there a second for salary ordinance amendments?

President Lloyd: Move on to item eleven, public comment. I think Mrs. Heiman had asked to come up and speak to Council.

Roberta Heiman: Thank you, Mr. President, Councilmen. Actually, what I’m here to talk about is something that would address a lot of these financial issues that our county and city is facing. Two weeks ago I was at a conference sponsored by Vectren and the city, they brought in a national consultant to help explore ways that we can stop this brain drain that this community has had for several decades now and start attracting more young professional people to live in this community and more twenty-first century jobs, twenty-first century employers that we need if this community is going to thrive. And this consultant said, you know, we’re in a competition with every other community in this country trying to do that. And what we can offer that maybe some of them can’t, our trump card could be our quality of place, our parks like Burdette Park, there’s no other county in this country, I think, that could beat a park like Burdette, or things like the downtown river front, our Pigeon Creek Greenway, and she said that this quality of place has to include more things like that, more Pigeon Creek Greenway. Our trail on the downtown river front is a great start to something that can be really spectacular. Our trail at Burdette where the construction has started now to take it out to USI, that’s a great start, but we need more (inaudible) we’ve done. The people who are interested in doing this have formed the Evansville Area Trails Coalition. It’s a coalition of about thirty groups including our universities, our hospitals, Keep Evansville Beautiful, the Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Greenway Advisory Board, Burdette Park. We’re interested in helping make this community a healthier, more vital community with safe routes for us and our children to walk and ride our bikes from where we live to our parks, our schools, our workplaces, our shopping areas, even to grandma’s house. And in many parts of this city and county now, it’s not safe for us to do that. We don’t even have sidewalks, much less safe lanes along the street or bikeways. So we’ve looked at how other communities are accomplishing this, and what they had and what we didn’t have was this non-profit coalition that can work with local government units and seek funds, engage the community in getting this done, seek national and state and federal funds to do it. So that’s what we’re all about and I’m here to invite you to our coming out event. We’re sponsoring Evansville’s first ever Walk And Roll Week May 17 to 23. We’ve got more than sixty events, all of them free except for canoe rides. The canoe ride will be down Evansville’s water trail. We don’t think of Pigeon Creek as a trail but, in fact, it is. And in some communities, now these water trails are major tourism attractions. We’ve got every kind of walk imaginable, every kind of bike ride for everybody. In the middle of this week, on May 19^th, we’re having a trails summit and we’re bringing in some of the top urban trails people in the mid-west, people who’ve raised funds, who’ve helped plan, who’ve helped engage their communities in accomplishing what this can be here, and we think we can do it. So I’d like to invite you to that. It’s going to be a day-long conference. I think each of you has, I hope each of you has received an email invitation to this, but I wanted to come and personally invite you to it. I think that we can all learn something that could, again, lead to something really spectacular for this community. I have something to give to each of you, and I wanted to give each of you this map that shows a little of, it’s kind of our dream for what we could have here, but I was at a church health fair Sunday, passing this stuff out and people grabbed it up and they left me two short to give to each of you. So this is just information on our Walk And Roll Week and what we want to accomplish.

Roberta Heiman: Thank you very much, and I’d be glad to answer any questions that you might have.

Roberta Heiman: We’re going to start at 8:30 in the morning with registration and coffee and then the programs start at 9:00 and then we’ll go to about 3:00.

Councilmember Shetler: No questions, but a comment, and no pun intended, but you guys are obviously on the right path. I, you know, a few years ago, went with a group to Lexington. One of the things I noticed, you may recall, I was pretty involved in the smoking ordinance to try to ban that in public places here in Vanderburgh County, and noticing in the places that do have the bans, mostly in college towns, Bloomington and Lexington and Columbus, Ohio and those kind of places, the young people are definitely looking toward healthy communities, which bicycling and the walking and all the things that you’re describing fit right within that, and also being in the relocation business, we have an opportunity to speak with and be involved in why people relocate and where they do. And most of it centers around the kind of healthy environments that you’re talking about, progressive communities are engaging and investing into that. And it is something that certainly could put us on the map. So I applaud you for your efforts.

Councilmember Goebel: I just want to say thank you and congratulations for getting this started. Thank you.

President Lloyd: Great. Thank you so much. Anyone else want to address the Council? Anyone else in the public? Okay, is there a motion to adjourn?

(There being no further business to come before the Council, the meeting was adjourned at 10:02 a.m.)

1303-1710-1303	Public Defender	27,523.00	Withdrawn
Total		27,523.00	Withdrawn