Town Council - Regular Meeting

Everyone please 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. We'll let the record reflect all council members all present this evening. And uh Pastor Brown, would you like to start us off tonight?

Yeah. Let's pray. Our heavenly father, we're thankful for another day. All the blessings you keep giving us. Thank you, Father, for our town. And I thank you especially, Father, for those who serve and they do. I just pray that we continue to guide them as they work to keep everyone safe, make town even better than it is now. And Father, I know that planning is going to begin pretty soon for the Earth Festival. I just ask for wisdom and guidance for that that this might be a record year for us. Ask for your blessings on the meeting tonight. I pray it all in Jesus name.

Amen. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Jimmy. All right, we'll begin with approval of prior meeting minutes. Uh we've got minutes from our March 9th council meeting. Make a motion that we approve the minutes from the March 9th meeting. I'll second. All in favor? I I. and we'll proceed with reports starting with Luke.

Okay. Under code enforcement, I issued four more code and ordinance violation notices tag two vehicles. Uh ordinance violations were for things like limited parking, no parking where posted, and two junk vehicles. Both the tag vehicles have been removed. One was moved about 100 yards away, which Guess he technically did what I asked, but now it's now I got to start the clock on where it is now. Um, I spoke with our attorneys about the status of the Munis property and it kind of opened a can of worms about how our penalty ordinance reads and they think that there's not really enough teeth or uh that's what he said. Uh so he wants to rewrite our penalty ordinance and give it something like uh a daily penalty. And

it says that though each day constitutes a new offense, right? And that's $10.99. But like that when you get to that $100 fine, you could give them a $100 fine every day. You would have to give them that ticket, right? Until until it's 2500. No, the state statute says we can go up to 2500 a day. That's at 1099 and that's in our ordinance bill. Yes. Yeah. But it would be I'm not opposed to having more clear have it more clearly defined in the ordinance, you know.

Yeah. And I was I was driving when when I talked to him and and I clarified with him like our ordinance does not have that and he said no. So I don't know what the deal is. But that's where the property is okay. I I would I would like if one of you guys reached out to them to kind of deal with like the writing of the ordinance type stuff. I'll get in touch with them. Okay. See what they uh

that's Alex. Um but yeah, they're they're looking for a more cost effective and that was one of his points too was the way ordinance reads supposedly it's not cost effective for the town. And and I said, you know, be willing to pay a little to have it cleaned up. Um if that's what we've done in the past and uh so that's just my conversation with them. Uh and under streets we have completed 20 locate tickets since my last board meeting. We salted once since the last board meeting and that will be our last salt of the season I hope. Um, I have a an email from Brad Davis. He is uh works with the highway department and he's who we kind of get salt through his uh his branch of the government, I guess. And the process moving forward with that is going to look different this year, I think, than it has in years prior because they're not happy with our salt provider right now. And so we did have 8 ton left in our in our order to to fulfill the 120%. Um, but you can't order on the 8 ton. You have to get the 20. You have to get

But we're into a new year now, right? Not yet. So, so that's in a week. Okay. And and if you read the email, we don't nobody knows what we're going to do and that's a week away. So, it's it's definitely crunch time and um kind of worrisome. So, I don't know. Can you can you uh in a week call this lease award? I'm going to call them tomorrow. Ask about Yeah. Just placing a 20 ton order. Yeah. Before we And if they can't give you a fulfillment date, then

Okay. Yeah.

Maybe we look at other options. Okay. And then just just on your guys' radar, Murray's clear, probably Fred too, the the bed on the 2013 Chevy is rusting out. We've kind of talked about this. I just wanted to let them know, too. I'm not sure what I'm not sure what you guys want to do with that, but it's rusting out pretty bad. I don't know if we get a new bed for it like we have in the past. If we just let it rust out, it's a work truck type of deal. let it rust out and roll with it or or trade it in for a new truck. I don't know what you guys want to do. Trade the whole truck in or or get a new bed. We're starting to service our summer equipment. The Massie has been completely serviced. Literally every single thing on it. Um and then I wanted to bring up again just due to the volume that I use my personal phone. I didn't know if a work cell phone is on the table. I didn't know if that's even an option. And I kind of want an answer on that. If it's

Is that what you want? Yeah, it is. U Jennifer, do you know the best way to try to

Some some communities just do a stipen, give them a stipen for um using you want. So I don't know. Let me do some checking on that. I do know one thing I was going to talk about tonight was our policy handbook that we haven't um settled on yet, but whatever we do with the cell phone, I know that that in a couple of emails I have sent you guys um different things about cell phones and and how to go about. There's a couple different ways. So, um, and then if you guys want to read the side, we can put it in the policy handbook as well. Um, let me resend those emails to you because Kathy had sent a couple emails to me concerning cell phones. So, I'll resend those emails to you guys and you can take a look at that. Then, just things that are coming. we're going to start uh cleaning storm drains. Um and then even further down the road is uh hydrant flushing, but that's going to happen when we have a in-house operator hired. So that's it. Any questions for Luke?

Thank you, Luke. All right. Thank you, Luke. Gentlemen. Uh yeah, that would be helpful. Is that a microphone up there? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Looks like it's on. Um y

first thing last meeting, Chris asked me to look into uh peerless and the the pumps, the wells, and um there's really the only thing I really see out of the report. It's nothing to be scared about. It's just the efficiency of the the pump itself is going down. Usually a submersible pump's good for 10 years. Ours are 23 24 years old. Uh, I got estimates on all three wells there. Like I brought to the attention before, the transducer and number four is out. That's $1,750. Um, it's kind of like a refrigerator. 25 years old. It ain't as cold as it um was 25 years prior. Um, as for the efficiency of the wells, they're just kind of getting dirty. They need cleaned and they need new submersible pumps put in. They're nothing to be really scared about. I mean, they could go out, but they're not going to. You got clean wells, very clean wells. Water's clean. Our iron's average. Um, I don't think there's anything to be worried about here. Okay,

that's just my opinion. Okay, I got estimates on each well there. I think if you want to do one at a time, I think I'd be number four first since transducers out on that one and that would be the one IDM would pick us apart on. Is that the third quote on here or the which quote was that? I think on the front page it says well here. Yeah. Which one? It's the very back one. That's the $44,310.

Yeah. I think that was for everything. The cleaning, the them bringing the rig out, the transducer, um the new well pump itself. Uh, I don't know what them really run, but just something they need to be done all of them at the same time.

We probably do one like every six, eight months apart. I mean, I don't know what the budget is here. So, I I don't know. But, um, they don't have to be done at once, but uh, you know, they're going to bring that big rig out to pull the pumps and better to be charged once rather than Mhm. So what I guess what I was asking was could one be done this year, one be done next year. I don't see nothing wrong with that. Break them up if you if if that's how you wish to do it. I just I was asked by by you to look into it. So I did.

Yeah. Well is definitely the least efficient uh versus its rated capacity according to their and that's not all the that's not all on the well pump itself. You know that that could be the screen getting dirty. That could be a lot of things breaking down the efficiency of the well. Mhm. First two wells about Murray look like they average equal about to what pump for well four would be. Yeah. Well two is uh higher capacity now than it used to be. Remember all that work we did a few years ago to it or I don't know if you were on the council. I don't think I was at that time.

Uh but that one's got a 200 gpm pump in it now which is new. It used to be like this like uh well three where it had about let's see 100 gpm at best. So it really was two to one back then. Now well two is somewhere in between. Yeah. Um but it's the newest of the of the three because I think Luke brought that to my attention that it was. So, um, well, I mean, does everybody want to read through these or give us some time? Yeah, I'd like to read through them. And thank you.

Uh, if we were to move forward with this at some point, Jennifer, what what fund would we notice we had the utility depreciation fund and also the water utility construction and it's noted here that it's in progress. That is the library. Okay. So, we can't touch that. Won't touch that. But we would do the depreciation most likely. Okay. Just to get a idea of where we're at currently. And that's that's funding. Yeah. That money is specifically for like this, right? In our water fund.

So, there is there is money available for that. We got $93,000 in there, which is good. Okay. Is Okay. Uh, the next thing is probably a filter down at the wastewater plant. Um, it looks like it froze and blew apart or something. I called three places to get uh estimates on them and only one of them would show up and that was the estimate that you have in front of you. I think that's really pretty fair price for a filter of that magnitude. It's like a 50gallon tank and it's it's a very large filter. When I saw this, I was very surprised at the price. I thought it was going to be

your hand or something like that. You know, telling Murray, I I bought a water softener. I know that's not a water softener, but I bought a water softener about 7 years ago. It was $2,300 for the well, and I thought that was a very fair fair price. Yeah, it is broken. Uh it is possible to run our uh coronation system without it. Um, but that's hard harder on those pumps and everything that is the one that swelled out there is what the fiberglass that's like. Yeah. Okay. It was all tested. He brought a test kit. He I turned the pump on. I turned the well on. We ran it. We flushed everything. Very high iron out there. Okay. So, that's where would it be good going through our injector system?

Yeah. In my opinion. This is the waste waste water. Yes. It's out in the building out there. Murray Murray, what's your thoughts on moving moving with this? I mean, with the price and everything. I mean, I was surprised. I thought it was going to be more and I You think it'd be more?

I also uh think that it's probably something we need to get taken care of. Like I said, I think uh part of last year might have been running without it, and that's just wear on the pumps and the injectors and all that stuff, right? So, um, it pro it's a good idea to get it fixed sooner rather than later. So, would that come out of our sewage utility operating fund? Again, a question which fund would that depreciation on the If you want some point, yeah,

I agree. At some point, we need to look getting that insulated, heated out there. That's what created this problem. Me, me and Luke already talked about that. We talked about what kind of heaters to put out there. Um I we kind of had a discussion already. We'd like to start hitting it as soon as possible. We have insulation and uh drywall and plywood, whatever else we need, you know, for finishing that off. Yeah. Can we start doing that, Emma and I? Like say we have a like I mean the only thing we need to set up first is the heat. We need to know what kind of heaters we're putting in it. He was talking like the water.

You do that or or we look at a mini split. We need to get the vent pipe in for the sink and everything to go up through the roof and everything too before we even start instating. Let's uh I would start on it tomorrow, but let's have that conversation at our next meeting and see what we can what we come up with. But in the meantime for this is is anybody prepared to move on this. I'll make a motion that we accept the bid for was it $3,88? I'll second it. All in favor? All right. All right. It needs the billing address needs. I don't have it. He's got the billing address where the water sewer plant is not here. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. I can go print off copies soon as I'm I'm done and bring them to you tonight or I can bring them to you tomorrow morning. Just give them to go ahead to work and just tell them to send the bill to 105 East Maine. That's what they have. I think that's what Yeah, it said 100 Kaufman. So that it's got the address for the building down there. Address out there. But it'll be a I did tell him to meet me at that building because they never find the lagoons. And uh he said, "You're right. I'll never find this garage." Yes. He goes, "I'm glad I followed you."

And then you see this living waters one. Uh John found that one of our Corine and uh regulators uh was cracked and it's not repairable and without. So, we have two cylinders. They both have a regulator on them. You can just run off of one, but if we're down to one if anything happened to that other one, we're in terrible shape. So, I told them it's a necessary item. Go ahead and order it. So, this is on order, right? Well, it's right there. It's been received out right away. So, um that's what that is. Living Waters is pretty quick at sending your stuff out that you want.

It's in that box. I mean, we've already bought it. Okay. But I believe that the I believe for like a a repair of something that's considered necessary. There's the threshold. I can't remember what it's like or something like that. So, I think we're okay. Try to keep it legal. Okay. Uh, the next thing is the CCR report. Um, since it was already up on the website, I went and print filled it out and printed everything out. Um, Jennifer and I both thought you guys should all see it before we send it off to printers. Um, so there it is in front of you. I believe it's all correct. Is that what's due in like June or something?

June. Yes, it is due to June, but wonder if the if the printing place gets backed up because I've seen that happen before. They get every town and every city got all the important fields on here and then all said and we can't get yours done till July and then you're think we're in good shape. But after you send that out, you got to fill out the CCR certification report too ID showing how you did it. Yeah, we send a copy to you see anything bad in here?

No, I don't see anything bad. We just got our POS back that we tested and it all came back way below AWWA standards. So, we're fine. Awesome. Awesome. Do you have anything else? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't know what you I didn't know if you guys wanted to talk yourself. Each council works different. Um we're still discharging down at the wastewater plant. I was going to get with Luke to see how low we usually go with that. Um I didn't know if there was another gate we could pull out there or or how that worked. Might be getting close. Yeah, I that's what I was thinking today. I was thinking, but it's free right now. So, um

do as much as we can. Yes. Um I got a wellhead protection plan. Uh lady coming to help us with it since it last one was 2003 and you're supposed to do them every 5 years.

So, we're going to have it done next month and it's a free program. doesn't cost nothing. They help you with that. Uh the alliance does. I know you're all aware of the alliance. Um they're going to come out and help help us put that all together. So then we'll have one up to date for 2026 and that's good for 5 years. Um can't see without my glasses. Uh uh finally um fixed our lift station out there, our wastewater or our backwash lift station. Um the circuit board was bad and while he was running both pumps, it burnt up the transducer or the um transfer uh can't think of the name of it now.

Trans something. It burnt that up in it. I do have pictures of it showing. So I don't know how they they replaced that and everything's working now. You know, was there any charge on that? Did they I don't know. I don't know how you want to operate on that. I I figure they're going to send bills warranty work. I know they come out and did did a bunch of work. Not that long ago. Was that? Yes. I think it was in the Yeah, I have the trans transformer in there smoke. I mean, it was just pouring smoke when we turned both pumps on. If you want to see the pictures

that that was more like a mechanical like underground the pipe is bursted rather than above ground in our box. So I don't know I know they installed some floats and things so that would operate properly. Yeah. And I didn't know if that involved maybe the new floats uh exploited uh something with our box. Okay. I don't know. It's a good question though. Well, I believe that's about all I got for you. You got any questions?

Tom, thanks, John. Thank you. Thanks.

All right. No Alex here. Uh Jennifer, what do you have for us tonight? Okay. So, we did get our um deposit in the state comp with our community crossing grant. So, that was 236,98160 along with our 20% of 5924540 will be the total of the 296 227 which was swap. Um in your packet you do have um our CCD fund. Um it is up to be reestablished. So um Jim has got this ready for us tonight for the first reading. Okay.

And um and then we will have a public hearing and an adoption on the 13th. Okay. And then there'll be more to this as far as um getting it getting it submitted. But everything has to be done by the uh June 1st. So I don't know if you want to do that now or you want to under new business. Yeah. Uh I'll go ahead and introduce it now. Ordinance number 2026-03-02, ordinance reestablishing cumulative capital development fund. And this is all uh uh pursuant to Indiana code 36-9-15.5. This will be available for public review until our uh next council meeting.

And then um policy handbook. just um reminding you guys to do you want to you want to have another special meeting to to go over the last things you I look at my notes I can't think of too many things that were still unressed I mean I think we're pretty close on it but I I do want to review my my notes and whatever emails that you poured over pretty okay and then just a reminder executive session and special meeting so All right. Um, lucky if I wait. Okay. Do you have anything else?

That's it. Any questions for Jennifer? All right. We'll go ahead and move on to old business. We got ordinance number 2026-03-01. Uh, you all introduced this at the last meeting or or was this just uh does it still need to be introduced? I need to introduce. Okay. Is everybody uh No, I don't think

we Is everybody pretty comfortable with this? This is basically defining a cat as a dog in our ordinance. So that problem cat should actually be addressed in some manner. Um if everybody's happy with the uh ordinance as it stands, I can go ahead and introduce this as well. work. So, ordinance number 2026-03-01, an ordinance amending chapter 92 animals and I'm not going to read it. Um, but again, it is available for public review and it basically does what I just said. So, um,

what is the process though if you have cats around the house at our doors? We're going to call Luke or I mean, yeah, how does that work? Yeah, you just complain and then he's going to do his best to try to figure out where they belong. You're going to be at my house all the time. But I mean, the other thing is we can uh we could potentially we could potentially Yeah, this help potentially do live traps and and put them then out at the water plant in the kennel and see if anybody comes and claims them. I don't know what we do after that, but I mean, should we put some teeth in here? Is there is there something in the ordinance that

somebody's dog runs off and it's picked up 14 times and they get fined? It'd be it's it's the same ticket structure that 50 100 and then 100 each time after that the same calendar year. So there are some or is it become a police matter if they tamper with the traps? Uh I suppose it could be potentially the town some kind of vandalism against us. The town will own the trap. Yeah, it falls under vandalism.

Uh so I think there's options there, but I think this is a good first start or first step and we'll see where it goes from there. Obviously, it's almost an unsolvable issue at this point, but at least maybe some of the the problem uh situations can be resolved. I saw a brand new litter uh three days ago Friday,

which is crazy. Um before I move on to other old business, uh this is also old business. the just just so everybody knows uh our Trust Indiana account that has the park money from the ball diamond in it has I mean last month it earned $1,189 in interest so that's better than uh better than it could be. So that's pretty good.

Money is sitting there growing while we're working on that. Um I have also been in contact with our attorneys. We're trying to get uh an ordinance written that would establish a citizen park board and uh so hopefully they are able to uh complete that in a reasonable amount of time and we can start moving forward with that uh library. So we've got one estimate so far. Uh I believe we're waiting on another one that you had met with. They're not interested. Okay. And then uh I met with somebody there on Saturday that has assured me that he's going to put in a bid and it's it's a gentleman from my church. He does really good work. Um uh and uh he's he does work for the city in Nolesville. He's worked on the fire department and stuff like that, but he's pretty detail oriented.

Is the elevator? The elevator has been made and is sitting in the manufacturer's warehouse. Uh the doorway though has been that work's been finished, but there's still a little bit more work to do inside before the the elevator can be installed. So that's

correct. Yeah. So you'll get in there at the ground floor and you can either go down to the basement or up to the main level. And uh it it should be really nice. We It's nice to have some visible progress, too. And I don't know if y'all stepped over there and looked at that. They did a really good job. Uh they matched our mortar color pretty pretty well. I mean, it it kind of looks like it was always there. So, hopefully we can uh end up with a nice door that also looks like it was always there and then the window above will figure that out. So, I think that's it. Is there uh any other old business from the council? Move on to new business. Since I already introduced uh that ordinance, we don't have anything on the agenda. Does anybody on the council have anything? Are there any questions or comments from anybody? Yes, ma'am.

He worked on the veterans spot in front of the post office. Oh, nice. I don't know where all those shingles are coming from. Is that from the building next door? Probably. Can you do anything about that? He spent time just picking those things up and I have to It's not It's not my department. If there's If there's things coming off of that building that are ending up on somebody else's, though, we could probably get them for something in our talk to you about it later this week. Maybe we can find something where you could send the owner a notice that they need to do something.

All right. Uh, that's not building related. Just saying your property is affecting somebody else's property. You're littering on their property kind of thing. Yep. I get it. Hasn't that property been in limbo for a while? Because we had it where people were getting in there and everything like that. Luke brought it to my attention and they've looked into it and it's all locked up. It's all locked up now. But yeah, now we have it. It's literally collapsing. We can we can uh potentially talk to Rick about that, but I think the the shingle issue affecting the neighbors, like if we can address that more quickly than trying to start some long condemnation process or something like that. No, I think that's what we should do. But I think we should talk to Rick as well and see suggestion building.

I think it's only matter of time for that building collapses. Sure. Because the roofs are already caving in in certain areas. When Luke and I went in there last year, when we when he was telling me that people were getting in there, I went to go upstairs. The whole upper floor is collapsed. I was like, I was like, "Nope. The whole like the ceilings are collapsing. There is four large amounts of mold blowing shingles onto the post office. Isn't that federal plan?" Sure, they could, but I don't know if they want to pursue anything themselves or not, but in the meantime, I say something a little more detrimental maybe, but the highly govern.

Yeah, I don't know. I didn't know if we had 30 shing the post office at least. Doesn't surprise me. I lost several as well. I mean those winds I think I picked up 15 the other day out of my just my backyard. I haven't got to side front yard yet. State Farms moving in a snail space in May right now. Sure. Uh is there anything else? Well, I appreciate everybody being here. Uh is there a motion to sign our claims and adjourn? I'll move that we sign the claims and adjourn. Second. All in favor? All right. Bye-bye.