City Council - Regular Meeting

I welcome everyone this evening to our meeting here at Stonegate Arts and Education Center, 931 15th Street, Tuesday, May 19th at 7 p.m. Heath, would you lead us in prayer, please?

Thank you for this day, and thank you for this opportunity for us to come together as the leadership of this great city of Bedford and be with us tonight as we go over the business of the city and just grant us wisdom and grant us a clear mind and let us do the best for our citizens and our city. And Lord, just be with us every day. In Christ Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Calling our meeting to order, we have approval of minutes from April the 21st, which is a regular meeting.

Make a motion to approve the minutes from the April 21st regular meeting.

I'll second.

All those in favor signify by aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Thank you. Old business, third and final passage, ordinance 7-2026, repealing and replacing chapter 51, sewers of Bedford City Code.

Mr. Mayor, I move to approve the third and final passage of ordinance 7-2026. Second. Second.

All those in favor signify by aye. Aye. Anyone opposed?

Thank you.

Moving on to new business we have compliance with statement of benefits CF1 tax abatement for Evergreen Drive LLC resolution 17-2024 real estate improvement.

Miles?

Good evening. Thanks everyone for having me. Again, I'd first like to thank the city of Bedford for the opportunity for the tax abatement. This was an extremely important part of our project and the ability to develop the project. I'd also just like to tell everyone that we're Extremely happy with the new space. The building has worked out wonderful for us and has been a great addition for our team. And we recently, just this week, welcomed four new team members to the office through a merger.

Does the board have any questions or anything for discussion? If not, I would entertain a motion to approve.

I'll make a motion that we approve the tax abatement for Evergreen Drive.

I second.

All those in favor signify by aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Thank you.

Thank you.

Compliance statement of benefit CF1 tax abatement for Sunrise Suites Resolution 72025, real estate improvements.

Derrick.

Hello, good evening. I'm Derek Stutz.

Yeah, thanks. Happy to be here this evening and happy to answer any questions in regards to the tax abatement for our property. We just developed and completed Sunrise Suites. It's nine duplexes, 18 apartment units, right over next to my office in town on 28th Street and 29th Street. The property looks just absolutely fantastic. It's beautiful. If anybody has had a chance to drive over there just recently, we completed some extra landscaping. I don't know what else to say, but like Miles has said on his property, when we applied for the tax abatement, not just a benefit, but it was actually critical. I mean, it was difficult to get the numbers to line up to make the development happen to begin with, but we're undeterred in our course of action to make that happen. And the tax abatement was absolutely critical in the factor to move forward with that project. And just for the record of one estate, also acquired the skating rink building a few months ago. And our plan is to build 12 more units there in three years. But that has nothing to do with the tax abatement here this evening.

Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Council have any questions, anything for discussion? If not, I'll entertain a motion.

So moved, Mr. Mayor.

Second. All those in favor signify by I I anyone opposed.

I'm abstaining.

Craig abstain OK.

Thank you, thank you kindly.

Request approval of 2026 or housing program grant funding additional $500 for a total match of 39,000 carry.

Good evening. i have a resolution for the city of bedford to consider they are we're requesting to go in for another unoccupied housing grant program that is due june or July 12th, I'm sorry. We're requesting 39,000 in local match for the program for a total project cost of 389,000. We estimate that we'll be able to assist 20 to 23 homeowners. Your last program, we assisted 17 homeowners. So by going in for additional amount and this additional local match, we should be able to assist some more homeowners. So this is a resolution authorizing the mayor to submit the grant application and asking for the 39,000 and local matching funds.

So to start with on your agenda you will see that first of all we're requesting approval of the $39,000 and then in number 4 is actually going to be the vote to adopt the resolution. So first of all we're going to look at getting approval for the to approve the $39,000 that we need for our part of the match. Correct Carrie?

Correct.

Any questions or discussion on the $39,000 for the match for the OR housing project?

Mayor, we had already approved $38,500, correct? This is an addition? That's correct. Carrie, would you like to?

Yeah. um so whenever there's a 10 minimum requirement for total project cost and i know when sarah had come in a few months back she had talked about um requesting she had when she first brought up the project she mentioned 35 000 which was 10 of the grant request and it should be 10 of the total project cost which last time it was 10% of the project cost or of the CDBG grant request. So this time we had come up with the numbers of the 38 five and the way the rounding works with the total grant request, we decided to go ahead and ask for the 39,000 so that way we're covered with that total matching funds the way the grant It's 90% of the total project cost that they will fund. So that's the reason for the $500 difference from what Sarah had mentioned before. Okay.

I guess one of the important things to look at from this standpoint is to how many actually helped last time versus if the grants approved this time how many residents that will actually be able to help. Yeah. And of course this is all pending being approved also.

Exactly. Exactly. So last time the grant request was $300,000 and the city put in $30,000. So this time the grant request is $350,000 with a request of $39,000 for local match. So that's three hundred eighty nine thousand. So, yeah, we're hoping that you'll get a good five more applicants or so. Obviously, you know, the bids and everything will come into play. But there was over you. You had quite a bit of our public hearing last time and we did this over one hundred plus people attend the meeting. And I think we had like one hundred and seven applications. So there's still a lot of applicants that are out there that are still interested in the program. And if you approve this today, we already have it in the works to do our first public hearing for that project, and that's scheduled for June 1st. So we would work on getting that public hearing taken care of and launching on Facebook on your city website to, one, let those homeowners know who applied before and then put it out there for anybody else to apply. And then the grant application will actually go in by June 12th or July 12th. I keep saying June. July 12th.

So when will we know for?

I think they plan on announcing awards like in August. They won't give us a deadline, but that's the tentative. It's usually a couple months after submissions, but I think that they had announced that, I think that was for June. So any time between August and September is when we would actually hear about it. And then the grant agreement would come out to the city. Usually three three weeks or so after the grant award so it will be there will be a lot of paperwork that happens this fall and probably wouldn't see construction on these homes until the first of next year would be my guess

Carrier there's the grant lady in June or whatever whenever they want to start this there is there another one later this fall. Yeah, we'll apply for if we don't get this.

Yes, yeah, so. The Indian office communal affairs they used to do a quarterly so there are four times a year and they changed it to just now they do it three times a year. So the next one would be I think in October is when the next one would go if this doesn't. get funded, then we could turn around and go back in again for the third quarter.

Okay. I just want the council to know that if we do miss this one, that we will still use the same approval that we're getting this evening to also go ahead and apply for the next round later this year.

The ones that didn't get picked in the last round, would they be, if they apply again, would they be a priority?

Yeah, we can do that. We have a scoring matrix that we use and in the past that has been done where if somebody has applied before they could get an extra point. Priority, the way the matrix has set up, we have elderly, handicapped veterans, single family household. Those all will get some additional points as well, in addition to where they fall income guideline. But yeah, we would like to, I mean, and that's obviously, you know, a city decision where, you know, if you wanted to award for people who had applied before, that definitely can be considered.

Okay. If there's any other discussion, if not, then this first motion is basically to approve the additional $500 to approve the $39,000 for the match.

I'll make that motion, Mr. Mayor.

I'm sorry. I think the resolution has 38.5 still in it.

I was going to say, there was another one that was sent. I've got one right here.

The one that's in our books has 38.5. Okay, good. Thank you. Okay.

We'll get it right.

We're back to the $39,000. So if there's not either discussion, Larry, you make a motion. Second. Okay. Larry, Brian. All those in favor, signify by aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? So now we will move on to the resolution 4 dash 2026 authorizing application submission for the owner occupied rehabilitation program and as stated that will be for this round and if we're not approved then it will always also be submitted later this year for another round. I would entertain a motion.

Just for clarification the actual wording on this resolution is different from what we have in our books here it says 39.

The only thing that's different is the amount.

I'd make the motion considering those changes in there.

I second. OK. All those in favor, signify by aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. Great. Thank you. Compliance with statement of benefits, CF1 tax abatement for W.F. Meyers Company, Resolution 18-2024 for personal property. Alex?

All right. Thank you all for having me tonight. And we still are very appreciative of the abatement and actually brought a little show and tell tonight. So I've got a part that was made off of our new equipment, so I'll pass that around. Okay. And in looking at that, you can see that the diamonds are aligned in rows instead of distributed randomly. And that's what this new technology has allowed us to do, which leads to 30% greater tool life out in the field in other products. And we are currently testing it in our products with local customers. Okay.

All right.

Happy to answer any questions anybody might have.

Council have any questions or anything for discussion? And if not, I would entertain a motion.

I would move for the passage of Resolution 18-2024, Mr. Mayor.

I'll second.

All those in favor, signify by aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Thank you. They'll pass it around so you can get back. Compliance with statement of benefits CF1 tax abatement for cap resolution 3-2024 real estate improvements. Doug.

The first one here. Your paperwork is correct on it. It's the one that it's the building that's on 5th Street. That we are at least part of it out to try star and then part of it is used by cap group. For GM so the other part so anyway the. It's been on schedule to do what it's we plan to do there's not been any hiccups other than that. Of course the Evie fiasco was is affected us a little bit not too bad. We still do a few EVs, but not much. But that volume has moved over to 10 speeds and other work, so still staying quite busy. So that one has done well. We're kind of looking. I know TriStar is hoping for a project that's in the pipeline. that would expand far as their number count. The building would stay the same, but the number counts would maybe go up. But this is current information that you have in front of you.

Okay. All right. So we're on the 1-3-2024 compliance statement. Yep. Any other questions or discussion? If not, I would entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion to pass Resolution 3-2024. I'll second.

All those in favor, signify by aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Now we will go on to compliance statement of benefits, CF1 tax abatement per capita, Resolution 9-2025.

And this is the one that has some issues with the paperwork that's been submitted. I've been out of the office for a couple of months with doing some other things. And so this one is the one that we just finished, 65,000 square foot building, which is not correct on this. So tell me what I need to do. Do I need to have our accountants submit a new document? Corrected version of this and what this building was for I could tell you right now what it was for is an expansion for the cap group for doing that we're going from a three day supply of parts for General Motors to a 12 day supply of parts for General Motors and And that increased our warehouse space, obviously, to store that many parts. So that's why, that's exclusively why this is being used for the increased volume of parts that we're keeping here. So we become the warehouse between the finished assembly plant and the casting plant. We become the warehouse for those. So that is currently underway and been going and And what I don't have on here with this compliance not being correct is I don't have the number count, people count, and all that. So that was a $3.5 million expansion. on top of the one we just had was 8.5 million.

I would say it would be best if you can contact him and have him send us a new one that's got the correct information on it for our files.

Do we need to come back and hear or do we want to vote? I can answer any questions on it, but if you want me to come back, that's fine too.

I'll leave that up to the council. Do you have any discussion if you want him to come back or if you're willing to go ahead and approve it with his information and then we get the proper paperwork, whatever you decide.

Any comments from my standpoint with the information he's given us, I feel like it's adequate enough to make the note on the abatement.

So with that being given, he's willing to provide the correct information. He will get it to the Clerk Treasurer's office and then I will ask for a motion to approve. So moved.

I'll second.

All those in favor signify by aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Thank you. Thank you all. Ordinance 10-2026, amending chapter 33, employment policies 33.50, health insurance request, authorization and approval of amendment to ordinance 33-50, health insurance carve out. So we put this in here and are bringing it to the council for your review to see if you want to take any action on it or not. It's something that We're looking at due to the revenue loss that we're going to be seeing. I talked with Billy a little bit earlier about that today on some of our losses, which some of our losses we don't know about. Some we're kind of familiar with what's going to happen. So with that being said, I'll open it up to the council for any discussion or questions. Denise has been working on this on some numbers and stuff to estimate what the savings would be if we go this route and then go from there.

Do you want me to talk or you want me to wait for questions?

I was just going to see if they had any questions as to what they would be looking for.

Has there been given any thought to in addition to this? Amending it so that if they wanted to keep the spouses on the city plan that they have to pay the whole cost of it rather than just not making them ineligible, right?

I mean, that could be an option. Whenever and Denise can look at those numbers for us. I think I are insurance. We always hear that a lot of times our insurance isn't that good, but it appears that whenever we're starting to look into this, that evidently our insurance is pretty good. We've got a lot of employees that have brought their spouses over from other employment. because we have better insurance and I guess maybe it could even be cheaper insurance. To look at that, if she can give us the numbers, I think because the city pays so much, that that will be a large amount. But I'll let you take it from there, Denise. Yeah.

Looking at the numbers, it probably is not something that will be done. But I did note that was maybe an option that they could have if they wanted. Because, yeah, when I read the numbers, I wouldn't think it would be feasible for a lot of people. But it does give them the option.

Yeah. And that's something that we can look at to give them that option. Do you have those numbers roughly the news. Just some of the council may not have those numbers.

Yeah, I mean roughly on for example the employee spouse plan down to the employee only plan for the $1500 deductible plan. There's a $1300 difference. And so that's what the employee would have to pay to keep the spouse. On the plan.

I came up with about $656 per pay period. Yes, that's correct.

Yeah, that's per month, and then half of that, of course, is per pay. So on the plan 10, it's about $1,100 a month to keep the spouse on the employee spouse plan. Of course, the family plan is a little bit more than that if they chose to go that way as well, so...

We've looked at some of these options before. In the past, whenever we just looked at insurance in general, a lot of people say, well, why don't you give the employee their insurance for free and then make them pay for the family or children or spouse or whatever. And whenever you get into this and start looking at that aspect, even if we gave it to the employee for free. i don't think it would be feasible for them to be able to pay to have anyone else on their policy because it would be so expensive and that's one reason that we've kind of left it the way it is with what might work best for the employee but as we said we're to the point now that we're going to have to start looking at revenue and decide where we want to create that revenue or cut it from or if we want to leave things the same and at some point if we have to cut some services I mean that's another option we just have to see what we want to do but Billy we're looking in in 2028 and what's already started somewhat

It's slowly we're slow, slowly losing money from the property taxes as the credits. People continue to file for their credits and the credits are getting larger on the books calculated. But the total by 2029, we're going to lose over $3 million in revenue. And that's if we keep the lit the way the state At where the city could pass the maximum of 1.2%. We still are losing revenue.

And even at the lid, one of the projections we got the other day, depending on how the lid could go, they were looking at over over $1,000,000. Yeah, 1.3 1.3 million possible loss of lit money. So I mean, it's something that we're going to have to really start looking. I mean, I'm talking with some of the mayor, some of them basically pretty much stop the hiring process just from that standpoint until we get a little bit further into this to see where it goes because as Billy said on this property tax thing it's starting out small and every year it's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger I think what 2031?

Yeah and it's very complex the way it's calculated.

So it's just something that we're going to have to look at how we're going to see about coming up with this loss from that standpoint. So we're just looking at options to throw them out there so that the council can look at them, consider them, see if they want to do them or if they don't want to do them and go from there.

So using some of the numbers, um, from our May invoice this year, so I have an exact count of how many employees are on each plan and each coverage level. Um, and just knowing using the information that I know for sure about employee spouses, um, and then guesstimating some of them. We're looking at a 250 to $300,000 savings.

So how much do we spend annually on health care? How much do we spend annually on health care?

About 3.1 I think is our overall annual cost. Now, that's just the premium that we send over to AIM Medical Trust. We also have the wellness program in place, which if the employees participate in that, it's an additional $105 per month per employee. So if you're looking at roughly $70,000 on top of that, we pay out as well.

And on that $250,000 to $300,000, you're talking just for clarification, that's per year? That's per year.

And it would be recurring. It's a recurring cost of savings.

So if we were to go with this option, can we make it... if the employees that are affected by this, can we give them extra money in their HSA to help to help offset that cost to completely offset the cost? Well, I mean, say if we're, you know, if we're gonna if we're gonna ask an employee to pay 12 or $1300 more a month for their health insurance, if they have to take it somewhere else, Is there a system that we can put into place if they decide to do that? And it's gonna save us 250 to 300,000. Can we put extra money in their HSA account?

As the council, I think you can put whatever amount you would like. You're also kind of describing almost like a individual coverage health savings account, which is kind of completely different. You can do that with an HSA, but you're basically, correct me if I'm wrong, if anyone knows about those, I don't know a whole lot about them, but I think you're paying the employee to get health insurance elsewhere. So there's kind of two different things there, but you could

Well, I think you'd have to be careful because we have other health insurance policies that we offer to employees that don't have HSAs. Correct. So then you're going to make a difference in your employees that you're going to be giving one money and you're not going to be giving another group money that could create a little bit of an issue.

And this affects me as well. So I have to look at this objectively, not... for my personal self, but my husband would be affected by this carve out. So, um, we're just trying to throw information at you. You know, we've looked at other options and this is what we're able to bring tonight.

So mayor with our insurance, what is, and I know they have a lot of other cities that they ensure correct through their trust. Yes. What is the Have you done a polling to see what other cities are doing? I mean, are other cities doing this or how?

Yes, it's like anything, some of them are, some of them aren't. I talked with the new mayor of Jasper today and they do the carve out. Something that I think stands out a little bit more than what some of the others are doing is what Lawrence County has done. Lawrence County did this carve out back several years ago to save revenue right here in our county. Vincennes, I talked to that mayor today. He said he's not doing the carve out. They're raising revenue in another place. I believe they're raising their water and sewer rates 50%. to capture some revenue from that. So some cities do it different ways. There's several of them that are doing the carve out. It's just kind of hit and miss. It's like anything. You've got to create the revenue. So you're either going to have to look at this option, or if you decide you don't want to do this option, you're going to have to look at another option to create revenue, or as I said a minute ago, if you don't create the revenue, then we'll just be looking at services from that standpoint. And that's something that can be looked at also. It's kind of a total package as to how we want to deal with it, but I guess my input is Whatever we want to do or we don't want to do, that we start working at this to come up with what we want to do. Because by the time we turn around once or twice, if we do this, it's not going to go into effect till 27. And in 28, I think we're going to start seeing a lot of revenue loss. I thought in property tax billing in 28, they were estimating, what, 1.3? I don't think so. that we're going to be losing. So it's just something that we have to look at. And I know that we're looking at the food and beverage tax. to see if we want to pass that, to see how much revenue that might generate as to how it can be used to offset some of our expenses. But whenever you look at this total package, we're looking at several millions of dollars that we're going to have to possibly be able to cover and go from there.

What's the time frame on executing this if we decide to make a change?

It would go into effect January of next year. That's the other reason that we kind of started on this early, because we know this is going to affect a lot of people. And if it's something that we decide to do, adequate time and also of course we turn around twice it's going to be budget time and Billy's going to have to be doing what she has to do for budgets.

And also with the AIM Medical Trust they need to start getting everything together probably by August to meet our open enrollment date in November so they need to kind of add all of this language to our system.

And with the council, you know, we're presenting this stuff and bringing it to your attention. It's not something that I'm saying has to be passed tonight. I'm fine if you want to table it and think about it some more, what you want to do, but it's something that we've got to start looking at answers as to what we're going to do and come up with some type of a rough plan and go from there.

Denise, I just want to make sure that I understand this correctly. So with what the proposal that's been made is that only an employee of the city of Bedford would be covered under insurance. No spouse.

No, no, no, no. If, if a spouse has access to other coverage through their employee, if they're eligible, Because some spouses may have access, but they're not eligible. So there's a couple of different levels that they could weed through before they're weeded off of our plan. Employee children, children are covered under the plan no matter what till age 26. So that's not an issue. It's just the spouse.

It's just what I refer to as the spousal carve out. It only pertains to the spouse if they're eligible to have insurance. And if they don't have insurance, then nothing changes. The children can stay on. Nothing changes. It's just what they call the spousal carve out.

How many military veterans do we have that work for the city at this point? Do you know that number?

Not off the top of my head. Are you asking for like VA coverage or something?

That's the point I was coming to. Sometime back, I dropped my county health insurance, saving the county money, and I'm getting more in my paycheck by signing up through VA, which isn't accepted for Obamacare.

Yeah. We've got roughly 157 full-time employees. And even though it varies month to month, we have about 139 that take our health insurance. So I can't tell you the number that don't take it if they're veterans or not.

It would save the city money and it would save the employee money if they were eligible for VA health care.

Off the top of my head of the veterans or those currently in the reserves, I believe they take the VA insurance. But I don't know about all of them, so.

So it's whatever the board action or no action you want to take, if there's a motion to do something or a motion to table or whatever you prefer to do at this point in time.

I think before you is an update to the ordinance to allow us to put a spousal carve out into place. If we chose to do it, it doesn't say that we have to do it. It says it may. Um, that's what's before you tonight.

What type of feedback have you received from employees in reference to this?

Personally, I've had about three people reach out to me asking questions about it. A couple of them are very concerned about the cost of their spouses. Council may have had more people reach out to them. I've not heard from a whole lot of people.

So I mean, I guess my input's going to be, I wasn't familiar that you specifically put the word may in there. I mean, I guess the council could this evening past this, but unless you rework this, you're not actually doing it. You're just saying you may do it. So if that's the case, there's no, in my opinion, there's no need for real vote because you're not voting to approve anything. You're just voting that you may. So therefore it would have to come back to the council for another vote anyway. Correct?

I worked for an attorney for 25 years.

So I think with that being said, we might as well have a motion to table or it just dies for lack of a motion. And then we'll bring it back next time and leave the word may out and see if you want to pass it or not.

Is there any point to pass one that's ambiguous like this?

I don't think so, not since it says may. I mean, unless you're going to make a motion to change the may to... that you're going to do it. That'll be a legal issue for council at that point.

I don't read this to give the the mayor, the administration, the authority to go ahead and implement it without the council approving it. It doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't. So it would be a policy that the council would have to approve later.

It's in there in case we decide to do it. And then, of course, the council would have to approve it be done because it would change the salary ordinance.

Right. Well, if they approve it, then that would change the salary ordinance. So at this point, I'd either table it or there's no action to be done because... New ordinance will have to be done, reworded if that's what you want to do.

Are we better served to table or are we better served to let it die from lack of a motion, Mr. Mayor?

Council, I think you can table this ordinance and then have an amended ordinance present at the next meeting or whatever.

I move to table until we get an amended ordinance at the next meeting, Mr. Mayor.

Okay?

Second.

All those in favor signify by aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? All right, thank you. Thank you. All right, so our next discussion, our last meeting, I handed out to you information on a our ordinance reference we have an individual that's wanting a raccoon for a pet so my request last month and giving that to you is for you to review it and get input if this is something that you're interested in changing or if you would like for this individual to come and explain to you why they want the ordinance changed. I first wanted to check to make sure if you wanted to see about changing it or not. And if you do, then we can have her come to the next meeting. And if you're not interested in changing the ordinance, then I will pass that information along.

I think this is a moot point until they have a permit from DNR. Am I missing that point? I don't think they can even possess it until they get a permit.

And the information that I handed out, I believe, from my understanding, it discusses in there that by state they can have a raccoon evidently as a pet. So I don't know if they specifically have to have anything from DNR or not, but they can't even... get the permit from DNR if that is required, I guess, unless we change our ordinance, then it qualifies in those guidelines. And if there's no discussion, then I'm going to take it that I will probably inform the lady that the council is not interested in changing their ordinance, because that would be my assumption if there's no discussion. So if anybody has any discussion, please bring that forward. If not, then we will go from there. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Does the board have anything else for discussion? Okay. If everything goes according to our plan, this will be our last meeting here at Stonegate. We hope to be in our new chambers area for our next meeting. Everything's moving right along in that space. They're getting ready to do some video work, I believe, this week, the first of next week. The flooring's down. They just finished some painting again the other day, so everything's coming into shape. The street department facility, they're working on it, getting ready to put it out for bids. And Greg's finalizing some paperwork with the court. on our purchase of the land for the fire station on John Williams Boulevard. So everything is moving along. With that being said then, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All those in favor signify by aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? We stand adjourned.