The Vanderburgh County Council met in session this 28^th day of September, 2011 in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex. The meeting was called to order at 9:00 a.m. by County Council President Joe Kiefer.

President Kiefer: I would like to call to order the Vanderburgh County Council budget review meeting of the Civil Taxing Units for today, September 28th. Please, Teri, if you don’t mind, let’s do roll call.

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

President Kiefer: So we have a quorum and we can move ahead. I would like to ask Marcie Au to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance please. Thank you.

President Kiefer: Thank you, Marcie. I thought I would ask you to do that since you’re going to be the first to get up and talk a little bit about your budget and what you have going on.

Marcia Au: I’m Marcia Au, Director of the Evansville-Vanderburgh Public Library. This morning we brought you a couple of additional pieces. These were not actually budget pieces, but we did a printout. We have our annual report for last year online, but we did print one out for all of you. If you got it online you might want to go there and visit it because it is interactive. It’s our first interactive. So we’re not spending very much on printing with paper this year. We’ve really switched it to an interactive online as many organizations are doing. You also got a very brief overview of our new three year strategic plan. We’re focusing on three main goals. One goal is stable, sustainable fund raising for the library. Another goal is focusing on partnerships and collaborations because we believe by working together we can build a stronger community and hopefully decrease costs and then we’re working on programming targeted specifically to groups within the community. So we would welcome any of your comments, ideas, thoughts. We’ll be keeping the Council up-to-date as we move along. It’s a very doable program. We are in our first year and making significant headway already. I thank you for the opportunity this morning to bring the Library’s 2012 budgets to you. I believe you did get them in packet form both from the Evansville-Vanderburgh Public Library and the Special Library Fund which is Willard. Oh, there is Greg. I knew he would be here this morning to answer any questions you might have regarding the Willard numbers. With that I would entertain questions.

President Kiefer: Okay, are there any questions from Councilmembers? Marcia, what increase in salaries did you have this year percentage-wise?

Marcia Au: One percent which amounts to just under $17,000 for the entire 202 members of the EVPL.

President Kiefer: I know the County Council, in our budget, we’re looking at a zero increase for employees and I know that’s a hard thing to ask people to do. It’s tough, but that’s the economic situation we’re in. Any thoughts on this from Councilmembers? Councilman Goebel.

Councilmember Goebel: Well, in that regard I concur since we have already established zero for all county employees, that my recommendation would be that we keep consistent for all employees. I know that’s not asking for a lot of money, but it is somewhat the principle.

Marcia Au: It may be. I think, however, there are some offsets. We pay significantly less for health insurance per employee than I think the county does. Almost to the tune of half of what you pay. Our people worked very hard over the past three years, we have reduced personnel costs five percent, so we think the one percent is a small token of our appreciation of the very hard work they do keeping eight locations open for over 23,000 hours, contact hours, public service hours for the year. So I certainly understand the county’s perspective and I think we were not wildly ambitious with the one percent, so I would ask for your understanding of that number.

Councilmember Goebel: That’s very clear and there is no doubt that you work hard and the new innovative programs that you have certainly are going to benefit our community with your eBooks and things like that. We’re moving way ahead as far as technology goes, so I think your overall budget increase is what 1.5?

Councilmember Goebel: And certainly everyone is deserving, but I think my feeling is we must be consistent, so not to–

Marcia Au: Well, we’ll certainly take that under advisement and I will let the board know. Unfortunately we couldn’t have a board member here this morning.

Councilmember Goebel: I guess in general for the public, this is a non-binding approval, is that correct?

President Kiefer: Non-binding, but our recommendations do go to the state and I think the state does give it some consideration what the Council recommends and we’ll have to sign off on those recommendations. Yes, Councilman Goebel.

Councilmember Goebel: Well, if you don’t mind. Just what you have, the progress that you have made with the libraries and the openness for voting, for working with our youth and adults, it is very obvious that you’ve done an outstanding job. The more educated, literate we become or stay, I think the better this community will be served.

Marcia Au: One of the library’s missions is to make sure that we support literacy, both technological and the ability to read. We have some exciting programs going on. Montessori for adults, to help people better prepare for a GED. That’s a program that is being run through grants only, so not tax money there. We are very excited about that programming and all of the eMaterials that are available and we also have some substantive, collaborative efforts with the school corporation locally as well.

Councilmember Shetler: Yeah, with regard to the health insurance, the employee contribution that you guys–

Marcia Au: Ten percent for individual and the library underwrites 36% – I’m sorry, 64%, the individual contributes 36% and our deductibles are significantly different as well. We pay higher deductibles and co-pays.

Councilmember Shetler: I noticed that your, obviously your percentage-wise to your payroll, is much less than what ours are because they are running 15% of your employee labor costs, which is significant because the county’s does run significantly more than that. I do applaud you all for that effort. Did that change at all the percentage contribution from last year to this year?

Marcia Au: No, sir. That’s been the same percentage contribution for what? Probably 10, 12 or 15 years. We haven’t really changed that. It has never increased.

Councilmember Goebel: Has the amount of the contribution for the employees gone up?

Councilmember Goebel: I mean, you’ll be paying more in ‘12 than you did in ‘11, is that correct?

Councilmember Shetler: How much did your insurance, how much have you plugged in here for insurance to go up?

Councilmember Lloyd: Just a couple of points. I did get to go through the interactive and that was enjoyable. It was kind of fun because you turn pages. Kind of neat.

Councilmember Lloyd: I guess point of order, I can’t disagree with what Councilman Goebel is saying, however, you’ve got the city government that is going two percent on increases. Vanderburgh County, we have a much richer health insurance than what you guys have and our employees don’t contribute as much, so in my mind, if your budget overall is going up 1.4%, I mean, if you look at a one percent pay raise, I don’t have a problem with that. I did notice, I think, you lowered your capital reserve $100,000. Did you see that?

Marcia Au: Well, actually, that’s because we spent a good portion of that this year for the heating plant replacements at the Red Bank branch and so that fund can only be grown through a line item in the Library Operating Fund. This next year we also have some heating/cooling issues at our two older libraries and we have parking equipment that we are most undoubtedly going to have to install given the opening of the arena which may be good news. That also may be an alternative revenue stream for us.

Councilmember Lloyd: Everybody is worried about parking so you may have an opportunity there. The other thing I noticed which is interesting, you’re going to spend less on books, physical books, but your electronic is a little bit higher. I mean, and that makes sense because more people going to the eBooks and DVD’s and things like that.

Marcia Au: And actually the eBook dollars have been taken out of what was on your budget line item 63 or 4510 in terms of the budget category, and put into its own. It’s now 3156 or line item 29. We got significantly heavy use particularly now that the school corporation has also gone to the netbooks, so the kids...and we worked with them very closely this past summer so all of the netbooks are capable of downloading library eBooks and they’ll be able to use both our databases with reference collections that will be downloadable as well as reading for pleasure or non-fiction reading. So the eBooks have been extraordinarily popular. I think in the first quarter this year alone the use went up over 200%, so we’re putting the money into the resources that the people are actually using.

Councilmember Lloyd: One more question, and you still have, I believe you still work with the state on the number of people doing online, like, job applications or Work One.

Marcia Au: Oh, eGovernment, yes, sir, is a very large part of what we do particularly in our tech lab downtown. Thousands of people file for unemployment insurance, they update their resumes, they file online job applications and we’ve had classes, training classes, for individuals who are looking to revamp themselves, if you will, retool. I just talked to someone from Work One yesterday. They are going to be bringing a training and counseling service to the former employees of Integra and their Card Management group to the library for retooling, if you will. So we’re more than pleased. We work with groups and we have wonderful meeting spaces for people to do that.

Councilmember Lloyd: The only other question I have, I forgot, do you have...you’re still dependent on property tax, local income tax, is that something you’re looking at, other revenue sources?

Marcia Au: Yes, the primary, well, the number one goal, goal one, in our strategic plan is sustainable fund-raising, so we now have a half time grant writer. I believe the Council suggested that we might look at a grants person and we did do that. We’ve written some significant grants. Not to the point where we can underwrite operating, but we can certainly with new initiatives and ongoing programming, we hope to be able to do some replacement funding for.

Councilmember Lloyd: We appreciate the work you do and it’s a great tool for the community library. Thank you.

Councilmember Goebel: Just for my information, I guess, have you seen a steady decrease in the number of hard copy books since you’ve gone eBook or is it about the same?

Marcia Au: It’s about the same. Minimally, maybe a little fewer, but not so that we would quit buying, but you notice in terms of the monies, we are putting more of the money for resources, book resources, into eResources than we were before and that’s because of the use. Non print and print, and when I say that, a print hard copy book and maybe an audio book that you could have and hold in your hand, we started adjusting when people started to move to the non print sources a number of years ago. So we’re just adjusting again.

Councilmember Goebel: And doing well. One other question on Furniture & Equipment. Is that money dedicated already for a certain project or is that just the amount that you have set aside for the rainy day type? It’s line 4400. It’s the last page.

Marcia Au: Those are specifically for, and let me just check and I will refer you back to, and I don’t want to mis-speak. It’s the cost of machinery, tools, furniture, motor vehicles, computer servers, other equipment that may be outdated, broken down. It’s basically replacement. And correct me, I think some of that may also be Thin Client. We’re moving to Thin Client. Thank you for asking that question. Thin Client is a computer workstation without a CPU. It takes less electricity to run it. It generates less heat. The server actually, the main server actually acts as the server for the Thin Client. We’re going to be replacing all of our public computers with the exception of those in the tech center with Thin Client and possibly some staff computers as well. They last longer. We’ve been leasing computers for the last several years and we usually go at least a year or two beyond the lease and then we release. Libraries are very highly technical organizations. We rely a lot on computers, but Thin Client will allow us to, hopefully, use less electric and be able to keep them longer so we are going to be migrating to that platform.

Joe Gries: The tax caps kind of come in on the back end. We go through the budget process, everybody creates their budgets, figures out their levies and then the state, using the assessed value that we submit to them, comes up with the rates. Those rates are then used to calculate the property taxes and the tax caps are figured in when we calculate the property taxes. That money that is above the tax cap is revenue that we do not collect. So everybody is affected.

Joe Gries: Correct, yes. We base the percentage on what they don’t collect based on the rate compared to the overall tax rate for each taxing district.

President Kiefer: (Inaudible – mic not on). Does anybody want to make an amendment to the proposed budget?

Councilmember Raben: You know, just an in general comment because there are a lot of – understandably, it costs a lot to maintain our library system and all the wonderful things that you do, but at the end of the day over $12 million is a lot of money and I hope the board is constantly looking for ways to cut costs.

Councilmember Raben: I mean, if you look at it, this is probably roughly over $67 per resident. Our population is 180,000. That’s a lot of money. Even though the library has its own board, its own authority, this is a heck of a lot of money. You know, I have a hard time believing that we can’t do the same for less. When we look at constantly buying furnishings. I’m sure, again, I’m sure there is a lot of waste or a lot of extras in here and I wish I had a better understanding of all these lines, but that’s a whole lot of money. I mean, we operate on $63 million, the rest of Vanderburgh County and that’s maintaining a whole lot of services, 800 plus employees, trucks, equipment, computers, everything. So–

Marcia Au: Councilman, can you tell me what percentage of your cost or budget are personnel services?

Marcia Au: Ours are 57%, which is lower than the national average. So I understand your point.

Councilmember Raben: Ours is about $13 million plus...$25 plus $10 for insurance, so about 50%.

Marcia Au: Okay, well I think the School Corporation is about plus 90, so I’m not aware of what the other local government units are. That might be something we would want to share. I would certainly be happy to sit down with you or any of the councilmen, women, to look at some of the particulars.

Councilmember Raben: Well, this you’re spending about 20% of what we’re spending and I am confident that the services that we provide, we’ve done a good job of doing it as efficiently as we can possibly do it. And I just hope that, not just this budget, but all of these other taxing units as we go through it, have the same interest in mind and that is eliminating a lot of extras. I said waste earlier. Let’s say extras, that doesn’t sound as harsh, but $12 million is a lot of money.

Marcia Au: And I think we offer a lot of services, but I think maybe we’ll just agree to disagree on that point.

Councilmember Bassemier: And I’m sure they do everything that they can to cut costs. I mean, they’re professionals, too.

Councilmember Terry: Just a general statement. Marcia, I’m very impressed with what you do in the library system and I think you’re making that shift, that 21st century model that the National Institute for Museum & Libraries is really shooting out across the nation and I think you do tremendous work. I think in order to prepare young people for the work force the library is doing just that and being a strong support to the community needs that we have. And my vote is yes.

Councilmember Lloyd: I would also echo those comments and we use the library and we use Willard on occasion as well. I just appreciate the job they do. I’ll vote yes.

President Kiefer: Okay, moving right along. Town of Darmstadt please. I believe everybody should have the packets there in front of them.

Mallory Lowe: Hi, I’m Mallory Lowe, the Town Clerk for Darmstadt. And I have to say offhand our budget is a lot smaller than the library’s. You were talking totals earlier and I was going over mine. I think last year altogether to run the entire town we spent $174,000 and we’ve cut that down quite a bit. The years before it was way over $200,000. So we’ve been cutting our costs everywhere we can.

Mallory Lowe: I would say the road paving. We have the hardest trouble with road paving. It takes us a couple of years to save up and then when we do, we paved Darmstadt Road last year. I believe that was $100,000 which probably isn’t much to the county, but that was a lot to us.

Mallory Lowe: Last year we did a three percent and we haven’t discussed it this year, but we usually do about a three percent across the board. That’s very small because we only have three employees.

President Kiefer: I understand. I think what we’re trying to do is avoid precedence. I think reluctantly they did the library because the insurance situation, they’re paying such a big share of their insurance, 30 some percent. Councilman Shetler.

Mallory Lowe: With Scott Township and we’ve had a lot of negotiations over the last couple of years trying to get that down and we haven’t had much luck.

Councilmember Shetler: So this includes both fire and medical response in this $82,000?

Councilmember Goebel: It would be nice if we could be provided with prior year budgets too so we could have something to compare.

President Kiefer: Or maybe not the entire budget, but a spreadsheet that shows line items.

Mallory Lowe: I actually brought one with me. I can get those to you, that’s not a problem.

Councilmember Goebel: I think in this case we want to look at the salary increase.

President Kiefer: Yeah, that is what I was concerned about, too, because we give them a salary increase, then we kind of...I felt like it was a big exception for the library, but I would like to stay consistent.

Councilmember Goebel: Well, the library is definitely going to be consumed by their own personal healthcare.

President Kiefer: Yeah, that is what I am saying. But I would like to stay consistent otherwise.

Councilmember Lloyd: Well, you could offer to approve the budget first and vote on an amendment with salaries.

Mallory Lowe: That’s another thing. Darmstadt is...I don’t know if you were aware, but we don’t have health insurance or retirement.

Councilmember Shetler: In some respects its, I mean, I guess if we’re going to be consistent on it though, the City of Evansville is coming up and that would mean that we would have to–

Councilmember Shetler: I disagree. It would be nice if everybody was on the same page with health, all benefits, everything throughout the whole building.

Mallory Lowe: If we had a three percent increase, it would increase $1,050. That would be our total salary increase.

President Kiefer: I know, it’s a matter of principle we’re talking about here now.

Councilmember Raben: I think it’s important to recognize the fact that they have not provided benefits.

Councilmember Raben: So granting a three percent salary increase when you’re not absorbing, as they stated with the library, a 13% increase on benefits, we’re getting a hell of a deal, frankly. But I’ll leave that up. My motion stands.

Councilmember Lloyd: Our former Councilman Wortman, he would say we have a representative here from God’s country.

President Kiefer: Okay, well, we have a first and we have a second. No other discussion, then I’ll ask for a roll call please.

Councilmember Goebel: The salary line still gets to me, but since there are no benefits I’ll go along with it. Yes.

Councilmember Lloyd: I just have a question. Do you know approximately how much your budget went up over the prior year, percentage?

Mallory Lowe: We never spend all of our budget. I believe we asked for $200,000--

Councilmember Lloyd: Quite a bit? Some people would say you’re getting hosed on that deal.

President Kiefer: I’m going to echo Councilman Goebel’s sentiments here. You know, I like to stay consistent, but extenuating circumstances, you have no benefits. I mean, I can go along with the pay raise, so I vote yes. Congratulations. Thank you.

President Kiefer: We’re moving right along then. We’ll move onto the Evansville-Vanderburgh Airport Authority.

Doug Joest: Good morning. I’m Doug Joest, the manager of Evansville Regional Airport. I would just like to mention a few things before we start. The past year our enplanements or this year our enplanements are running about equal to last year. This summer we enjoyed new service to Minneapolis/St. Paul and Memphis. That was seasonal service and we hope to get that back when the airlines again add additional capacity. Fed Ex is now actually flying airplanes into Evansville. In the past they weren’t. They are now delivering some packages first thing in the morning. I don’t know if you all saw the newspaper this morning. We received a grant to help us get additional airline service. So with that I’ll just give you some quick highlights to our budget. Basically our overall budget is only up $13,000 and that is less than .25 percent of last year’s budget. I’ll just go right into the topic of interest, salaries. What we did this past year is we looked at our organization. If you recall, last year we had a position in our budget that we eliminated which was an Assistant Safety Chief, so that is no longer in the budget. It wasn’t in this year’s budget. In going into next year with some changes in our organization, so we have redistributed the work and we have eliminated, basically we’ve eliminated another administrative position. However, I inputted a two percent increase for people. I basically feel like we are–

Doug Joest: Even with that it’s an actual decrease of about $30,000 in our total salaries because of the changes we made.

Councilmember Shetler: Since we have been on this subject a little bit today about health insurance, the insurance policies that you guys have there, what kind of contribution do the employees make?

Doug Joest: Currently the employees do not make any contribution at all, but I would like to temper that with the fact that we have no coverage whatsoever for retirees. That’s one difference in our plans. So we don’t, because we have an accrual basic financial statement, we don’t have post retirement benefits so we’re saving a lot of money by not providing post retirement healthcare.

President Kiefer: I don’t think county employees have other than Sheriff’s department maybe.

Councilmember Shetler: I noticed that basically the health insurance that you’re providing to the employees is substantially greater than what is being provided, for example, through the library. Theirs was running 15% of their payroll cost.

Councilmember Shetler: Well, I’m including...when I say 30 I’m including the life disability insurance along with the health insurance, $758,000 total up against the payroll of roughly $2.5 million. A little less than that.

Doug Joest: Okay, and actually I think this year...again, I just...nobody knows what healthcare is going to cost. That number is probably higher than it is actually going to be. Our expenses this year look like they are going to be about $645,000 or $650,000. Again, admittedly there is a cushion there.

Councilmember Shetler: It appears to me that...I’m going to frame the argument all back to what we’ve been talking about and I think before we’ve all made the exception of pay increases based upon other benefit packages that are there.

Councilmember Shetler: And the other benefit packages seem to be much less than what we are providing in the county, so therefore compensation, you know, seems to be logical in direct benefits for pay increases and stuff where yours appears to be a policy that may be as good or better.

Doug Joest: Perhaps it is, but again I think you need...it’s hard to say this is better than it. You have to go down and compare it line by line what the actual benefits are and also take into consideration what people have available after retirement.

Doug Joest: Yeah, probably not. There might be an exception. That’s probably a general statement, would be true, most of them are.

Councilmember Lloyd: Doug, this is just the expenditure budget. Revenues this year versus last year, and I look at all your financials that we get each month from the airport.

Doug Joest: Through August our revenues were up about $136,000 over last year which is about a four percent increase. So we see increases in the parking lot and airline revenue is fairly flat because we have the same number of airlines as we had the prior year. The parking lot is up about seven percent due to enplanements being a little better. Car rental agency, again, it’s actually up 13% and our other rent is up substantially, about 38%. We had a warehouse that had been vacant for a couple of years that re-leased late last year.

Councilmember Lloyd: So these are all functions of the economy. It looks like ‘10 was maybe the trough and it looks like things are coming back. Or ‘09 was the trough.

Doug Joest: Actually ‘09 was the trough. Yeah, for example our enplanements in ‘09 were off 20 odd percent. We recovered half of that last year and then we’re kind of holding our ground this year and that’s our main benchmark.

Councilmember Lloyd: I did notice going through the expenditures you eliminated the Finance Manager and kind of reshuffled the positions.

Councilmember Lloyd: And, like you said, your overall personnel services is down $30,000, which is certainly commendable.

Councilmember Lloyd: Right, and there are a couple of small increases in different line items. You had budgeted for health insurance, that’s on page three, $750,000, an increase of $30,000. About four percent. When taking what Councilman Shetler had indicated, have you guys ever had conversations about possibly having the employees contribute?

Doug Joest: We have from time to time. We’ll certainly look at it. I’m sure our board will address it this year.

Councilmember Lloyd: I mean, I think for us it’s...we feel like the county’s plan is pretty generous. It’s hard to find one more generous.

Councilmember Lloyd: But the overall budget up only $13,485 or .2 percent, so it is a pretty tiny increase in the operation budget.

Councilmember Lloyd: Quite a drop from 2010, about $60,000 or something like that. So you guys are actually operating on a lower budget than two years ago, which I think that is also commendable.

Councilmember Goebel: I think the service the Evansville Airport provides for us is a necessity and sometimes it’s a luxury and hopefully you can land some more services. I would like to make the recommendation that we accept the budget as is with a recommendation of no pay raise.

President Kiefer: Ok, before you do that, Councilman Bassemier, you’re an employee at the airport. Do you have some comments or anything you want to add?

Councilmember Bassemier: I can just say that our health insurance after we retire, Mr. Joest says we don’t get anything, and I think if I understand it right saying when the county employees retire from their jobs they can carry on with the health insurance.

Councilmember Bassemier: Depends on the age, okay. But that is a benefit depending on the age, right? Okay, so there is some benefits when the county employees, for some individuals after they retire.

Councilmember Raben: I’ll second the motion and one quick comment. Doug, I think the airport is doing a lot of good things out there.

Councilmember Raben: Occasionally because of the destination or when you’ve got to be there, occasionally I have to fly out of St. Louis or Louisville, and I can’t tell you want a pain in the rear that is.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, but any opportunity you can, please fly out of Evansville.

Councilmember Raben: At the end of the day it’s so nice to park and walk 200 yards.

Councilmember Raben: And quite interestingly, twice in probably the last ten months, they were asking for bumps out of Atlanta coming to Evansville. So the plane–

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, the plane has been full twice that I have been on coming in. So that’s good to see. I hope we get more service again.

Doug Joest: Yeah, we’re working hard at it. The grant that we received yesterday certainly will help us in that effort.

Councilmember Bassemier: I would just like to say, you know, that the Airport Manager also took a pretty good cut in pay. I think about a seven percent cut in pay, so he is trying to help out all he can.

Councilmember Lloyd: Okay, we’re going to vote on the airport budget as submitted except for flat salaries, which is your motion? The effect of this, that would be the Council’s recommendation to the state, is that correct, Mr. Ahlers? The airport can still vote the budget as they submitted, is that right?

Jeff Ahlers: That is correct. What happens is that, because it is non-binding, though, the State Board of Accounts and the Department of Local Government Finance will look at our recommendations, will look at what the airport puts forth if they don’t modify their budget based on your review and then the State Board of Accounts and the Department of Local Government Finance would make whatever inquiry they want and either pick one side or the other or something in between. They are the ultimate authority.

Doug Joest: I have a quick question for clarification. Is that across the board, no step increases or are step increases allowed?

President Kiefer: So you’re clarifying your motion to allow the step increases?

President Kiefer: Okay. Alright, in that case. Councilman Lloyd and then Councilman Shetler.

Councilmember Lloyd: Just to point out, the two percent, you guys are following the city’s pay increase, so you know there would be some merit to that. I guess my position would be I’m going to allow the airport what they are requesting. I’m not here fighting for everybody’s pay increase, but the other thing I would urge you to look at is possibly employee contribution on healthcare. I think it’s something you guys need to look at.

Councilmember Shetler: I just want to point out that Doug has done an excellent job out there as the Director and the airport is in very good shape and I think underneath good financial hands. I would like to, being a representative of the airport, I have been a little bit busy with the Council budget and other business–

Councilmember Shetler: --activities and stuff the last month or so, but I would like to sit down with you and go through that health plan and look at that and see what can be done in the future.

Councilmember Shetler: Because I do think that is something that we need to look real hard at. Not only just employee contribution, but I would like to see where you guys fall in deductibles.

President Kiefer: Yes. So we have five yes, one abstention and 1 nay vote. Thank you very much, Doug, I appreciate the work you’re doing.

Doug Joest: Thank you and I would welcome anybody, if they have questions going forward, to contact me. I would be happy to show you what is going on out there.

(Motion carried 5-2/Councilmember Bassemier abstained, Councilmember Lloyd opposed)

President Kiefer: Okay, now we have Solid Waste. I think Joe is here perhaps. Yeah. Hi, Joe.

Joe Ballard: Hello, I’m Joe Ballard, Director of the Solid Waste District. With me is Susan Jefferies, our administrator and also Jenny Collins, the Evansville City Controller. And I would, well, we’ll say even though we are a county wide agency, a separate independent district, we contract with the City of Evansville, the City Controller manages our budget so we follow, basically, the City of Evansville’s personnel practices and the like. I guess my one comment would be something, basically, what I said last month in our hearing. We get our funding from the landfill. Two dollars per ton of waste that goes to the landfill comes to us, therefore we are self-supported. We have no tax. We are not tax supported, we receive no tax money, so our budget comes from that. We have raised our budget slightly this year 3.8% from $392,000 to 407,000 or $15,000. The last three years we have reduced our budget. In 2009 was the trough on ours, too. We received $316,000 from the landfill and that has steadily gone up since then. The Solid Waste Board approved our budget last night and Councilman Lloyd is your representative to the Solid Waste District. I can take any questions.

Jenny Collins: The City of Evansville’s per employee contribution is $15,336. We are a self insured fund. Overall on the city’s budget we increased our health insurance by eight percent. We historically have fell below industry average, not to mention the clinic has been a huge benefit for the city and our healthcare cost.

Councilmember Shetler: How much would you estimate that saving the city? Do you have a feel? I know it’s early.

Jenny Collins: Yeah, we’re, I think, going on our second year with it. But it’s also a huge benefit for the city employees also. In 2011 the city had to raise the co-pays. You know, we all were faced with that, you know, but a benefit to the clinic is city employees, as for the Solid Waste District employees, they can go there and there are no co-pays involved. We have a wide variety of generic drugs that are provided to the employees at no cost.

Councilmember Shetler: The average employer that I have spoken with in the last couple of months that are on similar programs seem to be saving roughly $1,000 per employee, per year. Which, you know, can be very significant obviously.

Jenny Collins: I think it’s a great benefit for employees also to be able to offer that kind of service.

Councilmember Shetler: No, absolutely. It’s definitely a win/win program. Alright, thank you.

Councilmember Lloyd: And I am your representative on that board. We approved the budget last night. I would like to point out, similar to the airport, I guess, ‘10 you guys had a pretty severe dip in revenue, or ‘09 and ‘10.

Joe Ballard: At the end of ‘08 and in ‘09, the whole year of 2009, we took in $316,000. For next year we have estimated about $440,000.

Councilmember Lloyd: Right, so with the bad economy less people were generating trash. Businesses were not generating trash.

Councilmember Lloyd: Right. And it looks like you got a projection of a slight increase. You think that might be very conservative? You know, a couple of years ago you had to do a hard thing and eliminate an employee.

Councilmember Lloyd: So this is a very lean operation. The majority of your expenditures come out of contractual services which is the different recycling programs.

Joe Ballard: That’s right. Well, our primary one, the Tox Away Day, household hazardous waste day we have at Roberts Stadium, it was a couple of weeks ago, that is out of that. Saturday we have an electronics recycling day at the Civic Center parking lot and that comes out of that. The various drop off recycling days, tire recycling, those all come out of contractual services, that’s correct.

Councilmember Lloyd: So, to me, this is a very lean operation. They have always been administered by the City of Evansville although the county is a participant, so I would just like to approve...make a motion to approve this budget as submitted.

President Kiefer: Is there discussion? I guess the comment I would make, again, back to the pay increase, is that, you know, this is completely funded without taxpayer dollars except for your insurance, but outside of that I think–

Jenny Collins. The Solid Waste District does contribute the per employee cost for health insurance from their non property tax–

President Kiefer: Okay, so I am going to feel comfortable supporting this. Any other discussion? Roll call please.

President Kiefer: Since your board member twisted my arm over here, I’ll vote yes.

President Kiefer: And congratulations on being selected as 20 under 40 and being featured in the Evansville Business Journal. It was a nice article.

Jenny Collins: Thank you, I appreciate that. As you can see with our budgets, obviously we have the two percent increase that everyone has been talking about in the budget. The city, you know, overall the General Fund from last year increased about 3.66 percent. As you all know, the PERF increased for all employees except for the Police and Fire. We had a 1.5% increase in PERF that was given to us by the state. I stated earlier we had an eight percent health insurance increase. We feel pretty comfortable with that number and hopefully be able to come below that. Life insurance, we had a little bit of an increase there. We had a ten percent increase in our life insurance. Four percent in our Civic Center rent and seven percent liability insurance. We are also self insured in our liability line items and worker’s comp. You know, with all those increases we still were able to keep the General Fund budget at 3.66% of an increase, so we did look throughout our budget to see where there could be cuts made. Just alone in my office, I had an employee that had been with us for 30 some odd years and, due to the new computer software and some duplication in services, I decided not to hire that position back. We hope in the future that there may be some other cost savings there. No elimination of jobs, but maybe through attrition, you know, due to just a different style of work. Not so much paper pushing. With that, I’ll take any questions.

President Kiefer: Got an approval, first and second. Jenny, just, you know, this document here is just not very user friendly. I know when I was on the City Council this wasn’t what I–

Jenny Collins: Which document is that? That is the new Gateway form so you can thank the State of Indiana for that form.

Councilmember Lloyd: Well, they were copied backward so you’ve got to even flip it around to read it.

Jenny Collins: Sorry about that. But that is the new state Gateway form and that was printed directly out of the state’s website. That is what we are required to put the budgets into this year.

Councilmember Goebel: I would like echo your congratulations to Jenny for the 20 under 40.

Councilmember Goebel: And also extend congratulations to Vanderburgh County’s own Council person, Stephanie Terry.

Councilmember Goebel: I feel like this has already been addressed with the city and the City Council, so I don’t know how much good it would do for us to adjust it any. I just think we have two different bodies and we are really faced, strapped, the same as you are, but I don’t believe we are asking for much of an increase anywhere so maybe in the future that can be considered and we can keep it on the same plane. Other than that, I have no further comment.

Councilmember Lloyd: I would agree. This is the City Council’s role. We’re just somewhat perfunctory in approving this. I didn’t see in here, I know it’s in here, the annexation you have quite a good increase in General Fund property tax.

Jenny Collins: Yeah, I was able to increase the maximum levy by almost $2.7 million which also helped, you know, in the preparation of the budget.

Councilmember Lloyd: But it went from...I know, of course, these are the dark old days when I was mayor it was around $40 million, but now you’ve got about 61.

Jenny Collins: That’s correct. The overall maximum levy calculation with the annexation and the, I think the percentage growth that we are allowed to grow every year came to about $62 million. Of course, that is split up between the General Fund, the Parks Fund and any tax supported bonds that are out there.

Councilmember Lloyd: Do you know, what percent do your employees pay for health insurance? Like the percentage for the employee contribution?

Jenny Collins: I’m not sure on that. That is something that I could get for you. Like I said, we did have to go to our employees and increase their co-pays last year when preparing the budget. It’s still a very reasonable, you know, program that we offer our employees.

Councilmember Lloyd: It’s like around ten percent or you think it is lower or higher?

Councilmember Shetler: I recently looked at that. It had different tables brought up. I want to say it’s a tiered deal. For a single plan it’s like 10 percent, up to a family plan it’s something closer to 30%.

Jenny Collins: And that is correct. It is a tier plan and that is why I am kind of struggling to think what the cost would be, but that sounds about right.

Councilmember Shetler: Plus I think you guys have some deductibles in there. You have some co-pays.

Jenny Collins: There are deductibles and co-pays. Our co-pays for a regular office visit I believe are $30, for a specialty, the co-pay is $50.

Councilmember Shetler: I think so. It’s actually a plan that is probably somewhat comparable maybe to the Library. We didn’t get into their details, yet–

Councilmember Shetler: But it’s definitely not as good as what the policy is, I think, that the county is providing.

Councilmember Lloyd: The only other question I had, and like I said, it’s City Council’s role here, but I noticed on page three fire protection contracts, you had zero, in the prior year, $37,000. I assume that is the coverage for Knight Township, does that sound right?

Councilmember Lloyd: I would assume that is revenue coming from your coverage of Knight Township when they disbanded their fire department.

Jenny Collins: That is correct. We also, I think, have some fire protection contracts with Pigeon Township also, where they do pay a portion of that.

Councilmember Lloyd: Then it looked like you had higher cemetery receipts. I mean, maybe you raised the prices there. I just noticed that. It’s only a couple of lines below that. Higher than what you’ve had in prior years.

Jenny Collins: We do have a very good cemetery director out there that has really done a good job as far as, you know, going out and selling plots and so forth.

Councilmember Shetler: I guess I’m looking at this as a learning session. The Emergency Medical Response that I think you guys dropped that contract last year.

Jenny Collins: We did, its not a tax supported any longer. It’s basically AMR has that contract. The Fire Department has...I can’t really speak to the contract, I would want to refer that to Chief Jarboe, but it’s not supported by tax dollars any longer. Used to be, the AMR contract was adopted by the City Council and then they could only charge a certain percent and then the tax revenue would pick up the other for individuals, and now I think it goes back to the actual individuals.

Councilmember Shetler: Were you guys in that contract, originally, were you kind of obliged to bill for the service?

Councilmember Shetler: Then you backed up...if they didn’t collect, then you guys backed it up, up to $535,000 or whatever that figure was. Half a million dollars.

Jenny Collins: That’s correct. We contracted with a billing company to do that. We still are actually billing in my department. We have taken that role on for just the...there is probably 100 to 200 customers left that are paying. We have some people that pay $5 a month. We want to allow them to pay their debt for, you know, their ambulance service that they had even though it was, you know, ten years ago. We still collect those payments from those individuals until their debt is paid.

Councilmember Shetler: Right. I guess the Fire Department is the first provider–

Councilmember Shetler: First response, and then if there is, in my business it is called cartage, but you’re moving the people from there to the hospital, the accident site to the hospital or whatever, that portion of it is billed by the provider–

Councilmember Shetler: – by themselves privately and it’s up to them to collect it or not collect it.

President Kiefer: Jenny, are there any major capital projects? I mean, obviously, no new stadium on the horizon, but any major capital projects? The zoo, something?

Jenny Collins: You know, we strived to get that AZA accreditation so we do have some capital projects at the zoo. I can’t think of specific ones. You know, we, of course, got a fire truck in there, I believe. We have some police cars, I think 15 new police cars in our capital budget.

Councilmember Raben: Mr. President, I do need to remind everybody we are past the advertising point for our final budget hearing, so we need to move on.

Councilmember Terry: I do wish that we could at some point be on the same page with pay increases and health insurance, but my vote is yes.

President Kiefer: I’m going to vote no. I like to be consistent on the pay increase section of it, but you pass and don’t really need our vote anyway, so thank you.

Jenny Collins: Thank you. Maybe we could work together on health insurance. I think that is one of our biggest dividers in our budget, when you look at them.

President Kiefer: That would be good. Okay, then we are going to adjourn today because we have other taxing units to hear, but these are the ones we had scheduled for today. Our meeting is not closed, it’s just adjourned and with that do we need a recess?

President Kiefer: Okay, let’s reopen the budget hearing meetings. This is a separate meeting so we are going to give just a minute for Teri to change the tape then.

(There being no further business to come before the Council, the meeting was adjourned at 10:01 a.m.)