Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the May 18, 2026 Akran Town Council meeting. Before we get started, I'd like to remind everyone this meeting is being recorded and your participation is your consent to be recorded and broadcast on the town of Akran's YouTube channel. Roll call. Jim Ser here. Rich Solano here. Tony Ramirez here. Right. Stand with me as we sing as we say the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you.

All the to business is the minutes. We'll have a motion to accept the minutes as presented. I will. We have a second. You'll have to second. I was not present. You can still second. I will second. All in favor.

Chad, you're up. How are you doing? I don't know what to do. So, well, just tell us. I mean, you can sit there if you want to or stand and whichever you feel comfortable with. Well, I lived at 102 out Cherry Street and uh for the last couple years, we've been having issues with roots in our drain.

I kind of problem so I can show you what I pulled out this last time about a month ago. Um been about every six months I've been having to pull out. This is about the amount I get about every six months. And this time I I counted it off. It's about 70 feet 70 75 feet where I'm kind of running the issue from my cleanout drain in my yard to where I'm hitting the roots at. So I don't know if there's a way that we can get it looked at and see where the roots are coming in or if there's a way that we can get the tree taken care of or like cut down or Okay. So, the tree that you're referencing is on the rideway, right? The uh Yeah, it's in between my yard.

It's one of those trees that were planted what? By well, went by the town. Well, 25 years ago, maybe at least. Yeah. Um so, it is our tree. Um now, excuse me. Everything else except in your yard is yours. Mhm. Um, and I think you and I talked about a camera. Yes. I remember you mentioned it. Has that been done at all? They I got I got two different quotes and they were quoting me between $500 and $700. I can't afford that. Come out and get That's what they're charging. You put a camera down there.

That's what they were doing. I got two different quotes, two different comments. So, and that's just not feasible for me. So that's I put some rootex down there this last time. Some foaming rootex that said that that should help kind of seal up where the reef coming in at and help kind of dig break them up to keep stuff from clogging up is whenever we have these issues that it starts backing up into the house and clogging. So I got two little kids. So I just want to see what we can do. So, um, since you've done that, is it still backing up? No, not right now. Okay.

Um, but based off everything else, it'll probably be about 6 months before I start having issues again. Okay. Unless unless the redex ends up working, but I don't know. I don't know where they're coming in at exactly. Like I said, I I put some painter tape on where I snake I had a 100 foot snake that I borrowed from my father-in-law and I put painter tape on there and I counted out. We're way out in the road somewhere near almost the other side on the other side of the street. Yeah, we're running into issues. Okay. Um, did Jake, did we run a camera down? Um, I can't pronounce the guy's last name.

Arsenos. Arsenal. Yes. Yes, we did. But it got stuck, right? It got stuck. Okay. Um, would you be willing to do that? Run a camera down. No. Okay. Uh, just for the simple fact of if it gets stuck again and we can't get it out then we have to dig it up. Okay. And digging on somebody else's property, we don't really prefer. Okay. Especially after the last day job we did. Okay. Do we know what trees causing the problem? There's 75 ft. There's probably three of them there that could probably be potentially causing that.

If I had to guess, it's it's so hard to tell. I don't know. One of those three. You know what? It could actually be a tree from across the road, too. Yeah. Quite possibly. Yeah. The the main runs along the other side of the road there. And if I had to guess where he's getting um roots is probably where his line taps into the main. Okay.

So that can become really hairy and really destructive really quick. So two, if it is a tree from across the road, cutting that tree down on his side may not help, right? If we cut that, if

I cut them all down, they're destroying our sidewalks, our infrastructure. Yeah. I I have no sympathy for these trees that have destroyed everything we have. What I'm saying is the tree that I that he thinks it might be if it if we go ahead and cut that down, you know, it may not be that tree. It may be, like I said, a tree from down the way or across the street. Yeah, it could be any of them. Yeah. I mean, we can go ahead and cut the tree down. I mean, they're eventually most of them are going to have to do a sidewalk project through there. So,

okay. All right. So, uh the only thing I will say is we have cut down a ton of trees this year and I think we probably went over what we thought we would go budget wise. So, it'll probably be early next year, spring of next year. Um but we'll discuss that internally. You get home from work one day and your tree's down, then So, you think there's three trees that would need to come out to solve the problem? Hypothetically, I have to look at it again. There's there's one right out the front of his house.

And then across the street to the west a little bit, I think there's one. And then on his side to the west, I think there's one, but it may only be two. I can't remember, but there's definitely two that I would be concerned about. Okay. Except there's two on this side, one on the other. Yeah. Would that help a little bit? Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, if he wants to take on a couple of them, I think that would definitely help in the long run because I know it just it gets tiring having to do that like every

every six months. It's so So the one across from his house is not well there's this one here that one there I think and Rochester be on the west Okay. Well, does that kind of help out a little bit? Yeah. Okay.

I think it will. And you know, I think it's sad that I do enjoy like the shade tree and stuff, but I think it's just causing too many issues. But they're tearing up our sidewalks. I know that. So, I think that probably the bad thing. Okay. We've done some sewer work where we've had the company come and some of those. Have we gotten that far on that sewer line or?

No. We've always whenever we've had that done on Rochester Street, we usually just go from like Virgil Street to Maple Street. Okay. So, there's two blocks in that area. That's usually where we have if we have a main backup, that's usually where it is on Chester Street. But whenever we have RNR this year, we're going to have them go from Jonesies all the way and camera and see what we got. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that'll be interesting.

Very good. So, you can hang around or you can leave either way. Thank you. Not that I want to kick you out. Thank you. Thanks, Chad, for coming. Appreciate it.

Okay. Uh, DC construction pay pay claim number one. Well, looking at this first page, amount due for this application is 51,2339. Is that correct? Correct. And of that, 40,81871 will come from the PCMG grant. 10,20468 will come from town funds for our 20% You want to make a motion? Sure.

Uh, a motion that we make the first payment of $51,23.39 um to EJC DC DC Construction uh for street and sidewalk work uh in progress. I'll second it. All in favor? All right. Thank you. These public reports. Um Justin,

you've got your incident report here. Um congrats or going like to remind the public um we had yard sale day Saturday and uh remind everybody keep the golf carts off the highway. chat with uh three individuals

and uh I point across you can cross the state highway not go down the state highway just a reminder and I would like to hire Mark Craw as a part-time deputy um there's got some personal stuff going on not that he's not going to help us he still help us. But um Clark approached me or approached him a while back and uh he's been with sheriff department for three and a half years as a reserve and just did his uh one year just graduated academy two months ago. Um, so I'd like to have your blessing and it's going to be a few weeks before he starts get uniforms ordered, getting that filmment and stuff for Akan, but we'll get those things taken care of and go from there. Sometime close, six, seven miles.

Well, glad to have you board. Do you have an idea of how much uh how much time you'll be working? Y I would say um I'd like to have him depending on how his weeks fall. Um he's got a short week and a long week. Okay. Obviously on his uh on his long week he may not be available much, but the short week maybe available couple nights. Anything anything will help. Yeah. Yeah. especially the shift he's going to be working. So, and which would be are you are you going to vary those hours?

It will be working primarily nights unless I'm on vacation, wants to work some covers there. But usually by the time dispatch or Rebecca gets a hold of me, I can kind of take care of whatever if I am not working that day. Very good. And get our blessing. questions? Nope. Thank you, folks. Thank you. Welcome aboard. Thank you. Any other questions? Nope. Do you have anything for me? Uh, next up is Fourth of July. Hey, how about that? How about that? Fourth of July. Did you play together?

I just spoke with Eric earlier to make sure he was He's got work that day. Okay. So, he's he'll be over here, but You guys obviously take care of that. Got it. Um Dererick's definitely going to be here issue. He'll be here like he normally is and then uh I'll get with the MA and hopefully they can come and help us and see if our good friend here can come in and help us a little bit. Be fine. You good? Jim and I did it for you by ourselves. I think Derek and I can handle if we have to.

All right. Thank you. Are you leaving for the night? Yeah. You'll be back in here. Yep. Okay. When I speak later. Yeah. Okay. Asher is finally coming back.

Yay. the week of May 25th. They're supposed to be here um that Wednesday. We're planning on during the water tower, south water tower, and said it'd be down for about a month. Um Thomas excavating is pretty well completed with their part. Uh they've got to go back and throw down some grass seed, I think, but other than that, they're they're pretty much done. um the Alliance Expo at the park uh Thursday. Uh you guys are welcome to come down for lunch. We usually invite you guys. If not, then you're invited now.

Um we're flushing fire hydrants on the evening uh slash morning of the 21st and 22nd. So, Thursday night and a Friday morning this week. Um, but everything goes well there. Uh, the tile 403 West Rochester was officially rerouted after talking about it in the last council meeting. We started the next day and finished it up about two weeks later. It was a train wrap,

but we finally got it rerouted with the help of uh lease excavating and we got her taken care of. Um they're supposed to start the concrete work at dillies the week after Memorial Day um next week. Um I don't really think they'll be down for too long. Maybe a couple days, but um the ramper will be out for a couple days. But hopefully this time they actually are able to get started on it. We changed the date like three times now. But um DC Construction is doing a great job so far. Uh move removing the sidewalks and pouring the new sidewalks.

Looks really good.

Yeah, they're doing a really good job. We're pretty happy with it so far. Um, and then something that came up today, uh, the last two times we've taken out our street sweeper sweep streets, broken down bird packs on us, and just in the last couple years since he's been here, um, he can remember to break it down. Four, five, four or five times. Um, I called the our salesman, Bobcat, and asked him what the life expectancy is of those street sweepers from the scale motors. He said, um, 8 to 10 years. We are on year nine. And he says the I mean, first of all, sweeping the streets is hard on them anyways. They're just a bunch of rotating, a bunch of bunch of heat, bunch of beating around. um meaning that over time they will lose alignment with the spindle and the inside of the sweeper. It'll lose alignment. It's really hard to get realigned um just because everything bows and flexes and being beat up and uh so we we got a price for a new sweeper. We got price from Ly. Is is that what you said, Rebecca? Lia. Uh, but it didn't have the attachment we needed on the sweeper. But we got a a quote through Bobcat of Warsaw and they got the whole package for us and it's $9,500. Like I said, something that came up today. Um, I don't know if you guys want to make a decision right now. Just putting the bug in your ear. Um, we do need a stream sweeper. There's no question. And we don't want to continue to buy parts, put them on this sweeper, and then get halfway through the town and it goes down

because it's happened several times the last couple. We've got the F July coming up. We have the Fourth of July coming up. The other big one. Yeah. We also have a contract with INDOT that we are required to keep the state highway sweep as well. What uh so far as finance finances are we sitting good? I told him today that there is funds to get this done. There is no point to us to put more money into this older and and we need to have it. It needs to be consistently available to be used.

The other thing is to repair this. Right now it's like 230 bucks. So we we can buy the parts, we can repair it, and then we need to sell it and put that towards the new one. Is there any trade in value for it? Bob can't give us any trade in value. I don't know about trade in, but Scott, our salesman, said we could probably sell it for2 to $3,000. I don't know. That's where Okay. But what was the name of the company again? Name of the company. Bobcats. Bobcat. Warsaw.

All right. Okay. Okay. Well, I'll make a motion that we go ahead and purchase this street sweeper from Bobcat Warsaw for $9,500. And then you guys can buy buy the parts. Yeah, we'll buy the parts. We have no idea when this will be delivered. Not. Okay. Things happen rapidly today. No, I know. All right. Is it the same design? Yeah. If he doesn't have it in stock, I would assume one of the Bobs are

lucky at pictures of the newer pieces. It looks like it is upgraded a little bit. We were able to kind of look at the side of where those come through and it looks different than what we have on ours. So, kind of it looks better. So, kind of assuming that they maybe made some adjustments to us. Um, it's got it's got a little bit different design. It looks like it's I don't know, a little more rigid. It's got some other bracing and stuff on it. So, it might keep it from wrapping on us. Um, it it it's the same thing. It just looks, you know, a little upgraded, I think. Right. Okay. Yeah. I made the motion. Second. I'll second it.

All in favor? I have any questions? Everything at the lagoons Jake going well for the most part. I mean with the amount of rain we have a lot of rain.

They're up a little higher than we want them to be. But um whenever we put our new valves in uh whenever that was year and a half ago or whatever, we just had problems with backups and like it seems like because we had to bolt our new valves to the old valves. So it seems like it bottlenecks when it tries to go through both valves and it backs up a little bit. Now we're still able to flow thousands of gallons a day. It's not huge problem yet, but we just can't get that full. Yeah. I don't really with our creek levels right now with the rain like we could have I mean Yeah. Yeah.

really be getting after it, but it's been steady.

So I mean so far, yes. Fine. Um, we've got we finally have our chlorine and decor pumps both running. Um, for the first month they were open, we couldn't get our pump to run. We had declor tablets and Dan said that those were not doing the job. So, we finally got our decllor pump running. Um but yeah, and if it gets to the point where it's too high and we can't get rid of enough water, we'll throw a trash pump into the one uh chamber on the the lagoons that feeds into the contact chamber and we'll just do it with a pump as opposed to going through valves. The goal is to not have to do that.

Yeah. So, we'll have to address those valves yet again when this upgrade comes. I and from my understanding with Dan, I think that was part of the Yeah. All that new valing should some of our issue is we're all gravity fed through there and and lots and lots of piping and it gumps up pretty easily. Turtles and turtles. Yeah. Turtles pipes. We're going from one all the way around and it's all gravity and then it comes out like Dan was saying, you know, with the new system, we basically go from one straight into the other and straight out. And so, so we're not kind of crossing over and adding all this stuff.

Yeah. And with that, we'll be able to add in some safeguards to be able to get in and clean those lines out. Right now, for us to get in, clean those lines out, it be Yeah. Yes. because you have to the only way to clean those lines out is while water is running full board at you. So you almost can't get in there and clean those lines out until the flow is reduced a ton. The flow is not reduced a ton right now. It's just reduced a little bit. So okay. Yeah, just normal problems we had of the legumes. They're just a little worse since we got our second early put on there. So

very good. Thank you guys. Andy, I don't have anything this time. Wow. You're disappointed. Don't you think so? Just for the record, we have yet to receive payment. Was looking at that the date of that entry. wanted to make sure she wasn't making it to the protocol this time. She's not.

I'll start with an email and see how that generates something. Okay. Small claims getting

Thanks. Yep. uh our dockets $73,769 and the payroll allowance docket of 24,78312. See anything in here? No. Motion to approve the dockets as presented. Second. All in favor? I heard

first name glad the guys are here go they want um I am going to be in Grand Rapids Michigan on our August 17th council meeting for a conference um there is five Mondays in August. Is anybody opposed to changing the council date to August 24th? Okay, I'm just I'll make notification to the paper and update our list on the website of that meaning change. Um, another thing that has came about rapidly, which I think is a great opportunity for our community, the park board's been meeting and really working diligently, like they had a park plan on doing some up upgrades to it as far as pickle ball courts, relocating the tennis court, and the potential of a splash pad. Um, we did the upgrade of the 5-year park plan to go through the DNR, but their minimum project you had to have 250,000 plus we had to match. And so coming up with a half a million dollar project, I mean that would encompass all of this stuff, but to guarantee to have that match, well, I sat on the North Central Indiana Regional Planning Council and they have all this like ready money that you heard about, ready 1.0's already been expended. Now it's 2.0. 0. Well, a lot of that stuff always ends up in the city of Rochester, Cookamo. So, they created a rural community development program

and um they set aside 275,000 total for this like grant and it's for the incorporated that aren't the county seats or the city um majors. So, it's all of us little bitty communities that are the only ones that can apply for it. There's 22 of us. When we did the webinar, there was three of us that showed up, us being one of them. Um, and so the way that grant works, we as the town, the grant, like if we're going to do 50,000 to the grant, they'll like they'll match that 50,000. And before on the ready grant, you had to have then three public partnerships, private public partnerships. Well, they're kind of waving that, but I have written an impact grant to the community foundation for 50,000 and that has been approved for us to do the grant application for them. So, it's a one page on the impact request and then they want you to do the thing. So, the biggest thing before I go and do all of this work for putting this grant together, the biggest requirement is how much is the town willing to put towards this grant? And two, they want to rep like one of the parts is there has to be a resolution from the council. So I'm not here doing all this work. The park board's doing all this work and then you're the financial board and we come to you and say we need x amount of dollars and you go we don't have it and we've you know like they want to make sure that everybody's a player in this game. Um and then there's a couple other people that we've not got confirmation of but um one of the park board members is working on additional funding to go. So through this, we could definitely do the pickle ball courts and possibly the tennis courts. The splash pad would still be its own separate project, but I don't know where else you're going to get that kind of money. So I know I've been just trying to every grant that we can capitalize on is what

I try to do. So So like when how quick we need to do this? Um I mean you guys can think about it. I we're going to need to move on this by next meeting. Everything has to be turned in by September to them, but they said if the applications come in, they're going to process them. So, okay. Um, park board meets on Wednesday. We're working to finalize the stuff with the community foundation and then I will work to get all of the application for the So, without the splash pad, what's pickle ball courts and tennis courts?

200 and one was 140 and one was 125. So 265 I think is what estimated because the splash pad was another 30,000 roll up the ordinance and then resolution is something you weren't expecting from us then um there's no amount I'm just saying like there's we can do as much and little as we want here. The other two ladies that set in on that thing there's 20 what I say 75,000 available. the other two ladies that were in on that that day each need like $10,000. I'm not saying that we would go for the whole $200,000, but I'm also saying if we got the ability to match.

Yeah, we wouldn't have the money to match it. So, um well, that's where we can be creative and have a conversation. There is money in general. There is money in economic development. There's money in rainy day um to do these things. So, I mean, and if you guys are completely against it, then you guys need to have a really serious talk with the park board so they can win pushing for this. Some of those funds and all those accounts that you mentioned are earmarked for wastewater. I I thought maybe maybe

the wastewater didn't have anything because it was all through SRF and that money was all going there was no that the 300,000 that we had to match for the water was all part of the SRF and that that doesn't have to we don't have to come up with that match for the wastewater project. So because we're doing a bond that's a much larger project the water side we did the 750 and we had to show the 300,000. So, I mean, like I'm saying service level. Let's sit down and I'll show you where we can pull money from if that's something you want to do. If you don't, I mean, I So, you want to just do you want to go for what? $100,000. I just put $50,000. 50,000.

So, I mean, that comes up with 150 and then there's still another 100,000, but that doesn't touch some of the other funds that are out there that are allocated towards that be the town. the town would would uh come in with 50,000. Right. Okay. All right. So, whatever we contribute is what the grant will match. Okay. And then but we're working to still have the three other partners to capitalize and make that amount towards the project larger.

So, otherwise, we're coming up with 250,000 for the other grant. And this way you're at least getting a small part of the project where instead of doing it one you might do a three-phase project to accomplish it. So and I don't know small communities always seem to get kind of screwed on these deals. So trying to make sure we don't lose a piece of the pie here. Okay. Um um

so not that anything needs to be decided today. I'm just bringing that. This is all brand new development we've been working on. If you could put some information I don't know if the timelines if you could talk to us individually show us some numbers where the fund would come from all that kind of stuff and then we would be prepared at our next meeting. I'm not I don't think I have anything else. That's my biggest thing.

Yes. Anything else? All right. I move that we adjourn the meeting. Second. Favor. side knee.