Town Council - Regular Meeting

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. of February 26th to order. Please rise for 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. Roll call, please. Robert Pope, present. Bill Holland, present. Greg Zusen, present. Don Lden, present. Jason Pucket, present. Okay, first on the agenda is the consent agenda. Is there any discussion or questions? If not, we'll entertain a motion. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda, including the check register for February 26th. Um the work session memo for February 12th and approval of the minutes for February 12th as presented. Second. Thank you, Julie. Roll call, please. Jason Pucket, four. Don Lden, four. Greg Susan, four. Bill Holland,

four. Robert Pope, four. Next is public comment. The public may comment on the on the agenda that is not part of a public hearing or on a specific matter within the council's jurisdiction. If you'd like to speak, please come forward. Make sure the green button is lit and state your name and address, please. No one coming forward. We'll move on to council comment and liaison reports. Robert, you want to start us off? Nothing today. Thank you.

Uh, I want to thank Chief Stops and the Avon Police Department for allowing the Avon softball club to use their radar gun this past Monday to see how fast they could throw the ball. Uh, they had a good time with it. So, thank you very much. That's all I got. Greg. Uh, I attended the community business leaders lunchon on the 13th at the um Avon school and then I met with Jim Morris for Habitat for Humanity regarding our Hope Landing project. Thank you, Phil. Nothing.

Okay. Um, I attended the NDOT meeting uh the other night at the uh Bridgewater Elementary School. Several of the staff were there. Linda and uh Paul attended and uh Chief Stops attended to speak on behalf of safety issues with the design and then um Steve Eisenbart was also in attendance which we appreciate as well. Um and that's it for me. Um do you have something that you wanted to say Julie?

I do. Um you may have noticed in your mailboxes today you have received the annual financial report that I will be submitting tomorrow. Uh, I wanted to present it to you along with I went ahead and gave you guys the RDA annual financial report as well. Um, the RDA will look that over as well and approve it at a later date, but I wanted to make sure that you guys were aware you have those financials in your mailboxes and they have already been published in the Republican as required by law. Thank you.

Yeah. Moving on to new business, we have the awarding of the 2026 CCMG paving project. Betsy. All right. Betsy Porter, public works project coordinator. Uh we had our bid opening today for the 2026 CCMG paving project. We had five biders. Um, we are looking for you to approve the lowest bidder listed. And I think that's it for me. If you have any questions and we've used Howard Companies before, if I can remember.

Yes, they did the roundabout at Angelina and 900. Any questions, comments? If not, we'll entertain a motion. Do we need to authorize Julie to pay this as well? No. So, this you guys are just awarding the low bid. So, just you're accepting Howard Company's bid. Okay. That's all you guys need to say. It doesn't need to be a dollar amount either. Just their bid. I'll make a motion to uh approve the bid from Howard Company for the CCMG paving project as presented. Second. Thank you. Julie, roll call, please. Greg Zusen, four. Bill Holland, four. Don Lden, four. Jason Pucket, four. Robert Pope, four.

Trying to sit really close. Mrs. Heiser told me she can't carry me on. Okay, it's final reading of ordinance 2026-02, the insurance reserve fund.

Yes. This ordinance creates section 2-293, the insurance reserve fund. You directed staff to um make this uh fund available to you for as part of your risk management and financial planning, which is a good idea. This ordinance merely codifies the existence of that fund, provides for the sources of uses of the fund, and also provides that it's a non-reverting fund, which means that it won't revert at the end of the year if there's a balance. This is second reading. Is this a restricted fund balance then? Is this a restricted fund balance? It can only be used for insurance. That's it.

Yes, it can only be used for what the ordinance says, which is shall be used as approved and appropriated by the town council. Uh the purpose of the fund is maintaining property casual, liability, workers comp, and health insurance. But the town council completely controls the use of the fund and the funds are not part of the general fund. So it stands on its own. It's its own fund, not its own account. And then for Julie, we've already have the funds set aside that we're going to appropriate for this. What was that dollar amount again?

I believe you guys discussed uh 150 to rainy day and 150 to insurance reserve. Thank you. Would anyone like to make a motion? I make a motion we approve. Go ahead. You got it. Stereo. I make a motion we approve the ordinance 2026-02 the insurance reser reserve fund as submitted. I'll second. Thank you. Julie, roll call, please. Robert Pope, four. Bill Holland, four. Don Lden, four. Jason Pucket, four. Craig Susan four.

Next is final reading of ordinance 2026-03 amending the FMLA policy.

Yes. This ordinance makes changes that uh you talked about in your work sessions and gave direction on regarding the town's uh family medical leave act benefit. And so it affects uh the first section is 6.046. It's on page one. In the new section, the changes are shown. And uh so just those changes clarify a great deal. I think clarify what your policy really is and what you want to do. While we were in that section, we thought we'd also take out uh the emergency paid family and medical leave benefit in 6.049. As you recall, those of us who uh live the pandemic was the state of Indiana required you to have this policy for a short time. That uh bill has since expired on its own terms and it's not the law in Indiana anymore. So, we are recommending that you delete that entire section. This is also secondary

discussion or not a motion. I move we adopt ordinance 2026-03 amending the FMLA policy as presented. Second. Thank you. Julie, roll call, please. Jason Pucket, four. Don Lden, four. Greg Zusen, four. Bill Holland, four. Robert Pope, four. Next is an introduction of ordinance 2026-04 prohibiting obstruction of mailboxes.

Yes. Currently, um there's not a provision of your uh parking regulation in the town which regulates what happens if somebody uh obstructs a mailbox. And so there were complaints made. So this uh ordin this section which would be section 8-76 of your code would prohibit that and would establish um a penalty for doing so. blocking someone's someone else's mailbox and um subject to certain restrictions. So, it's it's a pretty simple uh ordinance. Actually, most cities and towns have a a ordinance which says this. You you just never have. So, it's just introduction only, but that would be the effect of this new section 8-76.

Thank you. Uh Dan, section D. Um penalty isn't defined in here. The the penalty isn't defined for the first or subsequent um one I assume you're going to get not assume. I know you'll get that to us before the final reading. Uh my question is uh will this be in line with our other fines or or are we making changes at this time? I know we're introducing this, but how comparable will it be to our other fines? Yeah, your staff is working on changes to your uh fines right now. So, we're going to try to line it up with what we expect those will be when they are proposed to you. So, they'll line up with what I'll call the new fine proposal instead of leaving this uh maybe where they are now. Traditionally, your parking uh fines have been extremely low. Um, and so in order for it to be a deterrent, probably needs to be enough. I think staff, did you tell me 100?

Yeah. We're going to recommend 100 and 250 for 100 for the initial and 250 for the future. Sean and I had a discussion about it today. So that will be our recommendation. And Robert, we are working on those other ones as well. We have a whole we have got like 13 pages or something of fines. All the different department heads are going through and amending those fees. So you guys will see those as well in the next month or two. And yes, Robert, we would expect other parking violations to be in line with what we're proposing on this one. Thanks. Has Chief Stops and the police department had input on this as well?

If there's no other questions, we'll consider ordinance 2026-04 is introduced. Moving on to introduction of ordinance 2026-05 by money program and fund.

Yes. This uh ordinance would create a new section 2-295 of your code which would um create a buy money fund and uh buy money is uh generally money that's used for under cover operations. It's heavily regulated area by the state board of accounts. And so, uh, one of the requirements of the state board of accounts is they want all this money to be in its own fund. So, it's easy for them to see the activity in that fund and not have to go in and look through 10,000 transactions in your general fund. So, what we have done is created a fund which would be compliant with the state board of accounts guidelines. Uh, there are some uh, US Department of Criminal Justice guidelines as well. Anna who drafted this and did a good job has incorporated all this in there. Uh so it essentially would apply this this ordinance merely establishes a place for the money to be held and where that money is going to come from. It comes from your appropriation, how it can be spent and then the fact that this just like your last uh ordinance, this would be a non-reverting fund. So this is going to be when it when it runs out of money, um the the police chief's going to come ask for more money to be in there. But it does allow money that is um recovered to come back into the account all in its own fund. So it has its own records. It's very very important uh that it be done this way uh for compliance. This also makes it really transparent. So uh it's just first reading but we we believe that um that this uh code section would be compliant with what the state would expect us to do and the justice department.

Thank you. during the work session. I didn't I wasn't here. I watched it on online. Um I the question was asked, I think Jason did, but I don't I didn't I don't remember feeling warm and fuzzy on the answer. Is $10,000 the amount that needs to go into that fund? If I remember 2500ish was what was spent over years. Is 10,000 is that necessary? That seems like a lot more than 2500. So is the dollar amount correct? Is that a It wasn't decided. I I don't correct me if I'm wrong.

Well, yeah. Mo, from my point of view, that that is a that that would be a very standard amount for most law enforcement agencies in cities, towns, or even counties of your size. Okay. It is larger in other cities and of course smaller I guess in smaller areas. But um part of the idea too is not to fund one buy at a time and have the police chief come to a public meeting and say, "I need some buy money because this guy there's this guy down the road we're watching." So we want to have a little leeway, little little

unspecificity to the process. So um so you can you can look at this. I I think I would say uh I think it's a reasonable amount. Your experience may tell you otherwise. And if you do, if you're asked to appropriate money in the future, you might make that a different amount. Uh, more or less depending on your experience. Uh, but you probably won't know, but most all my other clients have them have these funds. And I think that is about the right amount. Fair enough. Thank you.

If no other comments, we'll consider that ordinance of 2026-05 introduced. Legal council report. Uh I would just tell you that um Anna and I have been doing lots of training with your agencies and commissions. That's part of our job is to make sure that they have that information. So in the first two months of the year, we usually get through about eight of them. And so we are doing that. We'll look forward to and your your board's commissioners are doing great. But again, they are only as good as we help them to be. So, we did uh BGA, Plane Commission, RDCE, RDA, RDA um recently, so we're getting those knocked out. Thank you.

Thank you. Public comment and council report. Any public comment? No one coming forward. Council comment. A lot of heads shaking. Council calendar. Ryan. Um yeah, just one thing. Uh next meeting is March 12th. Uh we do have a work session at 5:30 p.m. and then our regular council meeting at 700 p.m. on March 12th. Thank you. Meeting adjourned.