Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

And so it makes it where it's just

Call the Brown County meeting, the Brown County Commissioner's meeting to order. Start the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag, the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. James is on now. Thank you. Great. Excellent. All right. First item.

Any additions to the agenda or changes? Changes, I need to basically say the Humane Society contract, we're close, but we are going to have to take that up in our next meeting. Okay, I'll scratch that. Anything else? No, I don't have anything else. Approval of minutes and claims? I took a look at the minutes and the claims, and I know some changes I think. Amber corrected it, thank you. I'm so used to saying Sandy.

You can call me whatever you want.

So based on that and looking at those reviews, I make a motion that we approve the claims and minutes. Second. Okay, roll.

Ron.

Yes.

Tim.

Yes.

Devin.

Yes. Okay. Under new business, Kevin, start off Aegis Addendum Bridge Inspection Contract.

Correct. So as we all know, bridges have been a repeat topic here. So each is our contractor doing our bridge inspections. There is an addendum to the contract they've given us because they have gone through and there's additional work that has been identified that's necessary in order for us to be compliant with state and federal law. So in doing the initial inspection during phase one, they went through and added the following items that needed to be additional work above and beyond what was in the original contract. Critical findings and load ratings on bridges 20, 30, 37, 38, 80, 81, 91, 94, 112, and 127. So those were all things that had to be dealt with. Interim, so that's phase one interim part. Bridge 30 was not planned in the initial inspection because it was something that we end up being able to find money and do a fix on. Bridges 91 and 112 require six-month routine inspections, so that was something that was not originally in the first proposal. Bridge phase 1A, bridges 60, 20, 24, 30, 43, 51, 52, 80, 81, so on. I won't provide copies of this. or additional inspections. Interim bridge in Phase 1A, Bridge 97 will need an initial inspection that was not part of it. Bridges 91 and 112 require six-minute inspections were required. Phase 2 is the 84 bridges inspection. There's no changes there. Phase 2 interim, Bridges 91, 104, and 112 will need initial inspections because there's planned work to be done there. Phase 2A bridges 16 through and several others for additional inspections that were required. And Phase 2A interim bridges 43, 37, 80, 112 need initial inspections. So in saying all of that, our contract With the addendum, the addendum is $144,375.46. That's to cover a four-year period. This inspection is covered 80-20. 80% of it is paid by the federal government. 20% is paid by the county. So the overall total for the county from the four-year total is $108,697.99. and that works out to be $27,174.50 per year. The addendum in and of itself added a total to the county of $28,875.10, giving us an additional $7,218.77 for a year. And if I'm not mistaken, and having gone through the 26th budget, based on the appropriations that I see in bridge inspections, there are funds to cover those. So, I am bringing this before the Board asking us to approve this amendment so we can get this scheduled and have EGIS continue to do the work they're doing. So I'll make a motion that we approve this addendum. Okay. Second? Yeah, I'll second. Roll.

Tim?

Yes.

Kevin?

Yes. Ron? Yes. Okay. Next three items on the agenda are presentations. I'll start with Centerstone, then Corey on the Medical Ambulance Services, and then the Brown County Regional Serve District. Senator Stone, you're here.

Good evening.

Good evening.

I'm glad to be here. Is that mic on? It's on. Okay.

Sorry.

I'm Laura Young. I'm a resident of Brown County and I represent Brown County on the board of directors for Centerstone. I have served there for about five years at I WAS MORE RECENTLY APPOINTED BY THIS BODY, THE COMMISSIONERS, TO SERVE A THREE-YEAR TERM. SO I'M HERE TODAY REPRESENTING ALL OF US TO YOU FOR CENTERSTONES. MANDY, WHO IS OUR CENTERSTONE DIRECTOR, IS GOING TO BE GIVING YOU A LOCAL PRESENTATION IN JUST A MINUTE. BUT I DID WANT TO GIVE YOU A LITTLE BIT OF AN UPDATE ABOUT THE OVERALL STRUCTURE OF CENTERSTONE. probably followed a little bit in the news about a merger that Centerstone entered into with another equally or even larger behavioral nonprofit. That occurred last November. I believe you also have some paperwork about that. What I just wanted you to know is that Centerstone is about twice as big as it used to be. It is now the largest behavioral nonprofit in the U.S. What that gives us hopefully, is an economy of scale. We are very interested, we are a values-driven organization, so we're very interested in seeing the services being provided to the people who need them, who are the people who don't have anything. I can tell you that the present states in the US where Centerstone has a presence are Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, Florida, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, North Carolina, and Georgia. Centerstone, Indiana has also grown. We've added two counties to our original grouping of counties where we are the designated mental health center for those counties. The additional two counties that were added were Johnson and Marion. That's in addition to our core group, original group, which would include Bartholomew, Brown, Decatur, Fayette, Jackson, Jefferson, Jennings, Johnson, Lawrence, Monroe, Morgan, Owen, Randolph, Rush, Union, and Wayne. Center stood also has additional offices in Clark County, Delaware, Henry and Scott. So that's really the information I wanted to bring to you just to let you know that at this point we feel like we're bringing a lot of resources to the game. Some of those resources include a nationwide, actually international, military services specialized group that serves veterans and active service members with people who are trained specially in some of the veterans issues. I will tell you myself that I have a husband who is a disabled veteran and so this is very special to my heart. In addition, Centerstone has an institute that is doing cutting edge research on the use of technology and behavioral health issues. As you are probably aware, when you study anything It takes about 20 years for that to get into the hands of the people who are actually doing the work. So it is the intention to do this research and to bring that back into the hands of people who are doing the hard work that we want them to do. Thirdly, we also have a philanthropic wing, as well as boards that represent all of the states that I just mentioned. So that's the information I wanted to bring you and I'll let Mandy tell you about all the good stuff going on right here.

So I have a question. Yes. Are you the merger knowledgeable in the merger or is that Mandy?

It's probably a combination, and maybe just real quickly, introduction-wise. So I manage the Brown County Centerstone office, this office here, about 60 staff providing mental health services across the lifespan. And this is actually our new CEO. So I don't know if you want to introduce yourself just briefly.

Then you can ask whatever opinion of us you might have. Sir, I'm Lisa Dominici. I'm the new CEO for the Indiana market, so I represent all 17 counties within the state. I've been in my seat for two months, so I will do my best to answer the questions you might have about the merger.

And again, maybe you don't or not, it's just questions. As far as, it looks like it's an acquisition that Centerstone was actually acquiring, or?

It's actually sort of a, yeah, kind of a mutual coming together, these two organizations, but the decision was made to have Centerstone be the surviving brand.

Okay. And so I wasn't familiar with, so the, can you remember the name of the company?

Yeah, it's Brightly.

Brightly. So obviously they're not part of, they weren't part of. anything here in the county itself. Were they well established in Indiana at all?

Brightly was established in Marion and Johnson County, so that was their Indiana presence. They had acquired Adult and Child, that community mental health center, and so Brightly acquired them, and then Centerstone and Brightly coming together, that'll add in Marion and Johnson Counties.

Okay, and I heard you say, I think I recall saying you doubled in size?

Yeah, we are 11,000 employees serving approximately 250,000 patients. Okay, that's, yeah, thank you.

You bet.

Thank you.

So I just wanted to share, I am sick today too, so I'm not contagious, I'm on medicine. I'm also not the best public speaker, but I'm gonna try. I really just wanted to share an update about some of the new stuff going on locally. We have, oh my God, I'm gonna move this down a little. But we have, one thing I wanted to share is that recently we were able to expand into a satellite office. So we, the YMCA welcomed us over there and on Willow Street. We kind of outgrew the space we were in Again, as I shared, we have about 60 staff and we serve, I put in the report, and if anybody out here wants the report, I actually sent extra reports over there so that you guys can check it out. But we served over, that was 574 clients just last month and provided almost, well, we've provided 4,608 services just this past month in April. So we were doing that with our little building on 1156 Old State Road 46. And we do do a ton of home-based, community-based, school-based work. We are not all office-based, and we really try to remove barriers to people trying to access treatment in the community. And in Brown County, there's no, you know, transportation is a barrier. And a lot of people prefer, because of transportation problems and gas money and all the things, they prefer us to come out to the home. And some of them prefer virtual services, too. So we do a lot of that work anyway, but we were getting to the point where we were finding random spaces to try to have, you know, connection for mental health. It has been a true game changer to have the space at the YMCA. It added an additional 10 office spaces and a large group room. And now if we need a space, we have space that we can access for anyone who wants office-based services. We also had a really generous donation from a number of artists in the community. And I just wanted to share that because it kind of speaks to my heart. I'm born and raised in Brown County. I've been working with Centerstone for 20 years. in Brown County, and it just felt really cool to see, we put a call out, actually our board member put a call out in the local Democrat, just saying, requesting if anybody had any art to donate to kind of disperse the space up over there. It's where IU Health was, so it's kind of like, We don't have it in our budget at this time to necessarily redo it and make it look super nice. But we wanted to spruce it up a little bit. And we had an outpouring of all these artists donating these beautiful paintings. And they are all around. It's a gallery now. So I just want, if anybody wants to go look, you are welcome. My contact information is in here. It was just, it moved me to see the community kind of for that and people we didn't even know and talking about how Centerstone had touched their lives and how mental health had impacted them. And so that just kind of speaks to Brown County and who we are. As Centerstone, there's a whole list on this report of different types of services you may not know we provide. A big part of it is evaluation, life skills and therapy services, but I'm not gonna list everything on here. A few things I really want you guys to know, as a whole community, I want everyone to know, it's really important to understand Brown County has access now to 24-7 mobile crisis services. Mobile crisis means that you can call the phone number. It is on the second page, I believe. No, it's on the first page, actually, under services available to Brown County residents managed outside of the clinic. And you can see that the number is 1-877-463-6512. If anybody wants to write that down or put it in their phone, it's 1-877-463-6512. The mobile crisis team is able to respond 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, 3 a.m. on Christmas morning, if you need mental health support. And this is not mental health support that's specific to only thoughts about suicide. It certainly would include that. But this could be somebody who's really struggling with parenting their kids and is worried they're gonna lose it. Somebody who's been trying not to drink and is thinking about drinking. Someone who's struggling with anxiety. It's really any kind of mental health crisis you have, you can call this number and get support. And the unique thing is, They can absolutely help you by phone, they can help you virtually, but they will also come to your home if you want that, or in the community, wherever you are. Generally, it's going to be within an hour. Now, it's a mobile crisis team, so if they're out on multiple calls, there may be exceptions. Generally, they can be out to your home at 3 a.m. on Christmas morning if you need them, and you don't have to be a client. You don't have to pay for it. It's completely free. This is a mental health crisis service, and I want people to know about it because it's important. It's just important for people to understand. I also want people to know about 988. 988 is not managed by Centerstone. That's a federal initiative. I hope most of you already know about it. But 988 is a talk or text crisis line. One day, 988, it took a long time to build 911. It's going to take a long time to map out 988 and the connection to mobile crisis. Eventually, when you call 988, they should be able to map out to the correct mobile crisis team and deploy. For now, I would say just use both resources. But if you need somebody on site, you call directly to that mobile crisis team if you need a person in real time to come out to the community. Otherwise, you can do talk or text through the other. So yeah, I think that that's important information for everyone. The other thing that I'd like to share is that we do have free suicide prevention resources at the office, again, available to the whole community. We have Naloxone, we have prescription mail-back bags to be able to mail back any prescriptions that you don't need or excess things that you have at your house. We have gun locks. We've got just a number of resources that if anybody wants access to these suicide prevention and overdose prevention things. You can just walk into our office and you can access any of that at no cost. The other few things to just kind of know that have changed, we've expanded our hours, so we now are open until 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday. We still close at 5 on Fridays, and we do have weekend availability now for therapy, life skills, and appointments. Those are by appointment, so you already kind of have to be a client and request that, and then we get you connected to a clinician that works on the weekends. But I think that's great, too, because we know one barrier is just being able to work around your work schedule or whatever. Now we have a lot of evening and weekend availability for mental health services. We also serve people regardless of their ability to pay. So if you have no insurance, if you have insurance that doesn't cover the service, we are still seeing you based on your clinical needs and we will also provide you connection to our health navigators to try to get you connected in and get you insurance should you want it. Some people come in, we enroll them in presumptive eligibility and some people don't realize they're ineligible for Medicaid. and then they walk in and they have no insurance, they leave with insurance. So those are some of the things that I guess I wanted to share. We have same day access, five days a week, so you can walk in and you can get an intake the same day or the same week, and some people prefer to schedule, some people want it the same day, that is a possibility for anyone. And we are really working to integrate in both peers and health coaches, and we've done a really good job of that in Brown County. Peers, again, I don't know, I don't want to be repetitive for what people know already, but peers are people with lived experience. We have a lot of people on our team in recovery from their own substance use disorder or mental health challenges. And they have a tremendously powerful impact on the clients that we serve, and they are well integrated into the team. And then our health coaches really help us to take a holistic whole health approach and look at the intersection of primary health and primary care, mental health care, and whole health wellness, knowing they influence one another. So we're working really closely with our primary care providers, too, to try to address those issues, knowing they influence one another. So I don't know if you have any questions. I just kind of wanted to summarize some of what we're doing and some of what's new and important for the community to be aware of.

So I do have a question about, so I noticed you said you have veteran services or veteran care.

Yeah.

Is there anything related in the programming and things of that nature related to emergency personnel? Like to, you mean to EMTs? Sheriff's deputies, law enforcement.

So we do actually have, and I've talked to Brad about this before, that if you guys ever want any kind of like critical incident debriefing, we do offer that to EMTs, to law enforcement. We have done that in Brown County. We've done it for the EMTs before. It's been a while, and we've done it out at, I know we did it out at Palo Alto one time, and we've done it for the schools. I don't think the sheriff's, I mean, Brad can tell you, I don't think we've done it with the sheriff's department. But we can offer that support for them as well if they want that.

I mean, just for my clarification on context, Senator Stone is supported by a state?

Medicaid is our primary funder. So it's a combination of funding. So we do bill private insurance. We also do seek out grants and things like that. But our primary funder, the way we stay afloat, is Medicaid.

Okay. And what's your involvement with the state of Indiana? I mean, don't they – and there are statutes that govern – the mental health that the counties are responsible for planning.

Lisa could answer that too. But yes, we have lots of regulations. Absolutely. I mean, I don't know specifically what... I mean, one thing to just be aware of is that we are transitioning. The way that we operate was previously under a community mental health model. We are now under a certified community behavioral health model. So we've worked a lot with the Division of Mental Health and Addiction to move through that. Centerstone was very fortunate. We were one of few community mental health centers to be selected in Indiana to pilot a certified community behavioral health center because of our capacity to do this work well. And so we are moving through very closely working with the Division of Mental Health Addiction.

And then the budget for that really comes down to the counties. I think it's a little over $100,000 for us this year, if I recall. We budget that every year. So just to give you guys some context, you've got the federal, you've got the state. It's passed down to the counties, and then we get some service by Centerstone, and then we budget that expense. Then you guys give us an annual report. That's pretty thick. I appreciate that. A lot of numbers, a lot of statistics, a lot of information. I'd be glad to share that with anybody that's number nerdy. is pretty effective, so appreciate that.

Thank you, Mandy. Yeah, we appreciate all the support from the community. I love working here and getting to do the work that we do.

Yeah, it's good news on the YMCA. I'm glad they got a good tenant.

Yeah, Tim's been great to work with over there, and it's really helped our clients in here we're able to provide, so it's wonderful.

Is there anything else that you want to pick up? Well, just to repeat and make sure I heard myself, heard the answer correctly, you said you had basically roughly 500 clients this month alone?

Yeah, we served, I think that's on the second page, but in April we served 574 clients and provided 4,600 make services. which is actually pretty significant. If you think about the penetration rate for Brown County being about 15,000 people, that's a pretty significant portion of the population. And I couldn't give you this statistically, but anecdotally, I would say in Brown County, we have a lot more voluntary referrals. And I think that is something I'm kind of proud of as a community, because I think that speaks to us moving through, it's not gone, but with stigma and where stigma can be in rural communities, We have a lot of people that are coming in saying, I want support because I'm really struggling with this loss. You know what I mean? It's not all everybody's court ordered and required. You know, it really, we have a lot of people who are seeking support to care for themselves. So that kind of makes me proud. Great.

That's good. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you. When will we see you next?

Whenever you want us to come back, you let us know.

When's your annual report?

Yeah, it's by then.

All right, Corey. Hello, everybody. It's Corey Frost, your Emergency Management Director here, one of your local EMTs. We're going to talk a little bit about emergency medical services. Commissioner just asked me to put on a quick little presentation on kind of what emergency services looks like, emergency medical services look like in Brown County, and I was Trying to figure out where to start. I thought I'd just start at the very beginning at one of our textbooks. Dave Prinsenmeier and I teach a couple EMT classes and EMR classes. And we're going to start with what's BLS and what's ALS. Does everybody know exactly what BLS and ALS is? Awesome. Does anybody want a handout that follows these slides, just in case these are hard to see? We'll start there. I'm used to kind of pacing around and stuff and talking about that. Is that all right? So we're going to look at BLS versus ALS. You can go ahead and change that, Eric. So what is BLS? Basic life support provides non-invasive emergency care, typically performed by EMTs or first responders. And first responders can be law enforcement. It can be your volunteer fire department. It can be an ICO, which is law enforcement. It focuses on stabilizing patients until advanced care is available, and that's the ALS portion that we'll get to here in a second. It's also used in medical emergencies like trauma and transport situations. Go ahead. Common VLS skills that we teach, so CPR and AED use, even though you guys probably have all gotten your CPR cards or know how to use an AED, That's a BLS skill. You see somebody have a cardiac arrest, you know that there's an AED out there, you go get the AED and you start working. You're now a first responder performing a BLS skill. Oxygen administration, bleeding control and bandaging, another course that we teach, Stop the Bleed, which is like the number one traumatic injury that causes death and is preventable. We're happy to teach that to the community, whoever wants that. Splinting fractures, basic airway management, Patient assessment and monitoring. So we can keep an eye on that patient as we get them to an ALS provider or to the hospital. What is ALS? ALS, Advanced Life Support. It provides advanced medical interventions. It's typically performed by paramedics or advanced providers. It includes invasive procedures and medication administration. And it's designed for critically ill or injured patients. Common ALS skills, cardiac monitoring interpretation, IV and IO access, if you guys don't know what IO access is, it's where you drill into the bone and you get into the marrow there, provide that medication. Advanced airway management, medication administration, needle decompression, and advanced cardiac life support protocols. So the key differences, and it kind of gets a little repetitive, but I find that it's good to be repetitive in these kind of presentations because that seems to resonate really well with people, especially students. So the key differences are BLS uses basic non-invasive care techniques. ALS includes invasive procedures and advanced medications. BLS providers are usually EMTs. ALS providers are paramedics. ALS units carry more advanced equipment and medications, like our ambulances here in the county are ALS, so they all have paramedics. They all carry unique equipment, advanced equipment and advanced medications. ALS is typically used in higher acuity emergencies. So a higher acuity emergency would be like a cardiac arrest. You want an ALS unit heading towards that, right? Because we're gonna want to get some medications on board and treat that. Examples of BLS calls. Minor trauma, scrapes, bruises, kid fell off and broke his arm at the school or was arm wrestling. We've seen that happen. Stable medical complaints, basic patient transport, public assist calls. People call all the time saying, you know, we need a lift assist. We need help getting somebody off. You'd be surprised at how often that happens where we need to send somebody out and help them get up. You know, they fall out in the yard. and then the initial emergency response. So that's why BLS is very important too. So you have a law enforcement officer that's there first every time, just about every time, and they provide that BLS skill for the injured or sick patient. Examples of ALS calls, cardiac arrest, stroke symptoms, respiratory failure, severe trauma, overdoses, and critical medical emergencies. So how do these work together? BLS and ALS, that work together to provide efficient patient care. So you'll always hear a paramedic say, my ALS is only as good as my BLS provider. Because if they don't have good BLS, they have nothing to work with to start. You need that life-saving intervention that the BLS can provide so the ALS can get whatever medications to help and maybe some advanced techniques. ALS may intercept or assist when advanced interventions are needed. So if we didn't have an ALS unit and we had an ALS call and we had a BLS provider show up and they were able to transport, they would have to call to another county that had an ALS unit and say, we need you. They're not going to make it all the way to the hospital. We need you to intercept. So you would transfer that patient to that ambulance and they would provide that advanced care. Both are essential parts of the EMS system. In conclusion, this is where it kind of gets repetitive again, but BLS and ALS each play critical roles in emergency response. Choosing the appropriate level of care improves patient outcomes, we know this. Strong teamwork between providers ensures the best patient care possible. So that's kind of what I had in mind for this first module, and then there's a, There's a table here that kind of defines exactly what I was just talking about. So if there's any questions about what VLS is, it's all right there. ALS, I think it's a pretty good table. But that's what I have. So I'm going to kind of build on this module, I think, and do this maybe every couple months. And I don't know what the next module is going to be, but you may have any kind of questions or anything about what this looks like. It's just kind of information I want to give you guys. Yeah, Gary.

What type of BLS and ALS resources are resident in the county?

So as far as EMS is concerned, we have two ALS ambulances right now at the ambulance base. Some of the volunteer fire departments, one specifically right now, handling, can provide ALS non-transport care. So they can get the IV started so that when the ambulance does show up, they don't have that stuff to go through. So, but... Specifically two ALS ambulances in this county.

No BLS?

No BLS ambulances.

We had a Corddry-Sweetwater ambulance when they had staffing.

Yeah, so Corddry-Sweetwater has a BLS ambulance when they have staffing. Volunteer.

Corey, let me provide some context. I think what came up is the ambulance change in the ambulance contract. We're underutilizing the two ambulances that we have. The anticipated additional cost is $290,000. And so explain what our capabilities are. We have IU Health office here. We have a clinic. We have Centerstone for the mental health. And pretty much for our citizens, we have two ambulances. They're both equipped for the ALS and we have Lifeline. And so we don't have a hospital. We don't have urgent care. And then there's restrictions on who can transport who. And that's a whole different module that you can talk about. So in context, you say what medical services can we offer our community? Two ambulances and Lifeline. And the ambulances both are ALS capable as well as the people. Does that kind of cover it?

It does. And to clarify a little bit of something though, we contract with Lifeline. IU Health Lifeline is our Ground transport ambulances. When we're talking about the choppers that come in where we lifeline somebody out, that's no matter what. If we need a chopper to fly in to get somebody out of here to a trauma unit, you know, we're not going to find that trauma unit here. It's going to be in Indianapolis. That doesn't have to be lifeline. It could be air evac. It can be staff flight. So we have that available to us, but no. Go ahead.

Thanks, Lori.

Do you know how many paramedics there are in the county on the volunteer fire departments and how many EMTs?

Not off the top of my head, but on my computer I do. I would say I'm going to guess that we have three paramedics on the volunteer fire departments, but you have to remember, too, they're not paramedics on the volunteer fire department.

No, I'm just wondering. They get certified, so they have certifications, right, that make them paramedics? A license, yeah. And we have three as far as you know? As far as I know, yeah. And EMTs?

Goodness gracious, I'd be guessing. I mean, I know we've certified probably 13 in the last couple years, and then several emergency medical responders that are also VLS responders.

Okay, so maybe 15? Yeah, I'd say 15 maybe.

The majority of your departments right now, I mean, that EMT to EMR ratio tends to ebb and flow with people in the department. Right now, I'd say the departments are more EMR heavy than they are EMT heavy. Five, ten years ago, it was the opposite of that. That's correct. It just ebbs and flows the way people come and go in long-term care services. But I can't function as a paramedical in the fire department. Right. Because the fire department is only certified to a certain level.

But you are, though. Yes. And do you think there are three people like him? There's nobody quite like him. Better paramedics. Sorry.

Sorry, that was not nice of him. All right, Corey, go ahead. Awesome, that's all I have. Thanks, Corey. You're welcome. Thank you, guys.

All right, next, Brown County Regional Sewer District.

All right, give me a second. We've got to get set up. Okay, so I've got four slides here. So just to keep me on task, I tend to ramble, so that's going to help keep me there. Giving you an update about the Brown County Regional Sewer District project updates.

Can you introduce yourself?

Yes, I'm Matthew Hamlin. I'm the treasurer of the Brown County Regional Sewer District. Thank you. I am a county council appointee. I was just reappointed here in January, so I finished one term, and I just started my second term. So I have just over three years, about four years to go. Thank you for that. We have two other board members here. So we have Clint Studebaker and Mike Leggins. So they've joined us well. And I did see that Helmsburg was able to make it as well. So I guess I heard that their meeting went pretty quick, so that was good. So they were worried they weren't going to make it. So I have three major updates that I'm going to go through. So that's on this first slide. First one is I'm going to give an update on the Lake Lemon face. The second one, I'm going to go over the bean blossom update. And the third is going to be talking about some of the BCRSD, HRSD updates. And as we go through that, I actually forgot. I have Brian Bullock. He's our Aegis engineer. So that was he brought up some of the paperwork here before you. So if you have any engineering questions, I may look back towards him and defer. So I appreciate it. So if we go to the next slide. So Lake Lemon. You probably saw the Brown County Democrat article from a couple months ago. where District 9, Congresswoman Houchin, was able to award us just over $3.7 million in federal appropriation. That award is for the Lake Lemmon project in that area to design and not just design, but design and construct wastewater in the Lake Lemmon area. So that was fantastic to get that news and be able to share that with the community. Second, we just got an update on this within the past few weeks, is the SRF ban that we had. Since 2024, we've been able to reallocate the remaining funds that we used on design into the Lake Lemon Phase project. What that's going to allow us to do is now we're planning on going from just a design project to construction. So the goal there at the bottom is what I want to highlight is we want to have collection and treatment in the ground by the end of 2028. So this is really big for us. We're really excited. And being able to reallocate those funds is going to be a huge step on that. The other thing that I can present here, and I have to be a little careful, is we actually have a public-private partnership developing. So the official statement that I can read is, quote, a local Brown County resident has demonstrated both financial and operational commitment to partnering on this effort, reflecting a shared investment in the community's long-term sustainability and success. So we're still working on that. What that's going to allow us to do is to really get this goal accomplished. We're going to be able to work in the Lake Lemon area and get something in the ground by the end of 2028. So that's really exciting. So that's our Lake Lemon update. So Bean Blossom. So you've probably heard a lot of our Bean Blossom update, but I have a few slides here, a few notes to talk to you about that. So right now we are design complete. And that's what this big piece of paper here is. So we were using some of the design effort from Ladd Engineering. So if you remember, specifically Tim from years past, Ladd Engineering did a lot of the work in the Bean Blossom area. What we were able to do with the band funds, we took all of that design work and we were able to apply it to all the work that we've already done right here. So we were able to, we didn't have to waste any of that effort, we took all of that, we were able to continue the design, leverage it, and we were able to get the design to where the prints are sitting there today. And Brian, please correct me if I'm wrong on this. Basically we have mainline locations, done. We have lift stations, piping locations, collection laterals, all of that ready to go. Where we were on the next step is to go into that mainline easement phase, okay? That was the next hurdle that we were up against. And our goal in terms of timeline, so if you look at where HRSD was sitting with their construction plans, Our goal was to sit about one year behind them. So when they were going to be done, about one year after that, we were planning on being done. The reason we wanted to wait, and that's about where our timeline was, and that's in our minutes and in our plans, is we didn't want to have our collection system ready before the treatment plan was ready. That would have been good. So we intentionally lagged about a year behind. So if you were sending out for bid now, we would have been ready to send out the bid about February of next year. That was our plan, okay? So the easement phase. Again, we were to the point of mainline easements, not the residential easement from the house to the mainline, but getting those mainline easements in the grant, getting those acquired. And we know, you know with the easement process, that can take a long time. Could take six months, potentially a lot of lawyers getting things signed to get all of those acquired. So with that, we had that December meeting. In that December meeting, we were informed by SRF that Helmsburg's treatment plant was going from 100,000 per day to 14,000 gallons per day. And just like Helmsburg, we were surprised. So what we had decided was, okay, we knew about what our project estimations were. We knew that Helmsburg was now building a smaller plant. So if we were to try to develop the bean blossom project, we would also have to expand, fund the expansion of the Helmsburg plant. And I'm not sure what that expansion cost would be. I'm sorry, I'm going to guess wrong, but that was going to be significantly more money. It was going to be in the millions. It wasn't going to be in the thousands. So 2 million expansion. So that's additional funds looking at what SRF is able to fund in that $6 million range in January. Instead of spending more money, we had the designs. We were ready to go to get easements. We knew what that project was going to cost. We knew where SRF was willing to fund for that day to save the county money and not just burn money. And we paused the project until we can find more money. We have the designs ready. We were ready to get the easements, but until we knew we had funding, it was worth waiting. So that's why in January we voted to pause. So we're not stopping the project. We're just simply waiting to try to find more money. Because I don't want to, and I would vote against it as our board, to take out a loan of that size. I'm not going to do that for the customers. We have to find more free money, grants, public appropriations to complete that project. Once we can find that, the project resumes. But I think you can agree that taking out a loan of that size in the $10 million range, that doesn't make sense. But it gives us a task to find the fundings. Okay. Let me go through my notes really quick. Yep, those are all my notes on Bean Blossom. Any questions on the Bean Blossom area or Lake Lymond?

Yeah, I do. The 85%, I contacted State Revolving Fund and they identified, they sent you guys a a memo or whatever it was back in October, and asked for where you're at on the 85% number, which, as I understand it, was a commitment from potential customers that they support the particular project. I imagine you probably elaborate that a little more.

So Clint, tell me if I'm going to be wrong on this, or Mike. So I believe we were going to be working with a lady by the name of Tina, I think is what her name was, and she was going to go door-to-door to ask for that. But we also knew that that was going to cost money. I mean, her services were not going to be free. SRF was volunteering to cover some of that, to go door to door, get all of the paperwork, get the easement process started, to get all of that interest one way or another, specifically main line and then the main customers in that area. So that's where we were, and we were in discussions of getting all that work started, sending her out into the public. Then we had that December meeting, and we said it's not worth spending that money. If we know... that we can't get the funding for the final project, don't cost the taxpayers money. Pause it until we know we have funding or we know we have viable funding. Coming up that short, it's worth pausing until we know we have the funds. So we could have worked with SRF at that time and said, Tina, we want you to go door-to-door this whole area, get exactly every customer, send us the bill, and we'll go through and we'll do that. we decided it was worth waiting to make sure we were making good use of the funds. Okay.

So that's a clarification. The 85%, as I understand, the state revolving fund required that to get any kind of insurance of releasing additional funding. So your source of additional funding is... So that kind of stops that source of funds, does it not? If you don't have the 85% requirement?

And I'm not sure exactly how that funding works, but there is some language to that. And the best way I can phrase that is when we would have the project and we would go out there and fund it, there is some you have to have so many customers in the area because they want it to be a viable business. They don't want you to build a bunch for no one.

Well, you guys identified about 180 customers for that first phase fire call? 120, 130, I can't remember the numbers. 135.

135. Okay.

Yeah. But some of the big customers, like... Brownies, a lot of the commercial customers, in terms of EDUs per day, use a lot. So is it customer-based, is it EDU-based? So we were about to go and do that mainline survey and even had discussions with SRF of the efficient system, what we were talking about. making sure that we designed for what makes sense. We didn't want to build the biggest possible system we could. We wanted to build a system that was going to get the most use. So it wasn't a set in stone. Tina was going to help us hone in or focus or fine tune what that final system would have looked like. But it was going to have the main line all the way through with the trunk out the center being Blossom. And we decided to pause because we knew that it was worth saving that money now until we could find that better funding. And that could be through housing appropriations, it could be through senators or Governor Braun, it could be through a lot of other options there, and those are options that we're working on.

I guess my concern in 2006, the Bean Blossom RSD was established with the intent to justify a new sewer service in Bean Blossom. So for 20 years, the intent was to justify a new plant in Bean Blossom, and as you're well aware, the final phase of that, we couldn't acquire land, attempted to get park land for that, and DNR turned that one down. So the justification, and then you couldn't get the land because landowners wouldn't sell, release that land or offer to sell you that land. So my concern is the support you have in bean blossom. If you're looking to get, if SRF is looking for an 85% commitment from the customers and you don't have that yet, and then you got 20 years of trying to justify a plant that was not successful. So the good news is when all the studies were done, Helmsburg was selected got their funding to expand their plant. And I know when Ethel Morgan came through and did those re-engineering studies and did the different options, they were talking about regionalization. Well, it appears like we've achieved regionalization by identifying Helmsburg as that site to collect the wastewater that you guys are planning to provide through your pipes to your main lines, supporting lines, lift stations, whatever. So Helmsburg's still targeted to service that wastewater?

So in the, I'm trying to think, in the corridor project, that I think is the way that we phrase it, all flow, the plan was all flow goes to Helmsburg. So going to Bean Blossom, IDEM was against building a plant there for a while, right? They said, yeah, you can build a plant now, let's pump everything to Helmsburg. They weren't against it, they recommended it. Recommended, sorry, thank you, plant. It was before my time, that's why I'm looking backwards to make sure I get that correct. So then the plan became, well, design the system, get it back to Helmsburg. So that's what the current plan is, because if we can maintain that economy scale, it does make sense. You don't want to be inefficient for customers, because in the end, that's what makes sense to me. Don't build something just because you can, build it because it makes sense. The end goal is we want to charge as close to zero as we can, even though we know that's not possible. So we don't want to duplicate efforts. We don't want to have duplicate of any resource. So anything we can do to try to save on resources, labor, capital assets, any of that stuff, if we have two different sewer boards that have that, someone's paying that as a customer. So trying to optimize that is valuable. And that actually gets me to my third slide, if I can, unless you had another question. I'm good. So teamwork side. Okay. Go ahead. So he doesn't, but I have one.

Yeah, go ahead. So, if I understand at the beginning of this, because the statement was, we have $3.7 million coming from the federal government to probably have design, and you're saying construction is the attempt. So, SRF, that sounds like a recent change, because I know we had a conversation about that. They actually are now willing to... push the remainder of what the balance was on that? So we had the loan area.

The bond anticipation note, which was for design only is what the initial scope was on that band. Then we received the appropriation from Congresswoman Houchin, and we worked with SRF, and they allowed us to move the remaining funds towards Lake Lemon before it was planned for the Bean Blossom area for design. And now we can use that not only for just design, but we can also use it for construction. That was huge that they're allowing us to do that. That's not additional funds from SRF. That's the funds that have already been allocated.

So it's not new money that we've constructed. Yes, thank you for that question. And so the other part of that, and I don't know if you know total service for Lake Lemon?

The total funds we have is just over $5 million. That's about what everything is. So in total customers, there's hundreds. How many were in the Lake Lemon area? Last we checked, north and south shore area. 130, 140. 130, 140. Okay. That's just on north shore.

That's just north shore. You done, Kevin? Yes, sir. As far as Lake Lemon, are you going north shore, south shore? Are you staying in the Brown County area? Are you going over into the Monroe County? That's a great question. probably be easier to go on North Shore to get into Monroe County, I would think.

So right now, in my opinion, I want to get all of Lake Lemon. That's my own personal opinion there. I would love to try to get a sewer system through that entire area for that lake. I think long-term, that's going to be my goal. With what this initial $5 million is going to be for, I believe, do we know what our initial thoughts were? Can I say that? Of course. So it is North Shore, is our initial plan. Is that five million will be for the customers on that North Shore area.

And how much bigger is Ellsberg going to have to be to handle all this? So how many EDUs is that 130?

Yeah, so it's 130. So if we are able to get that, that's how big that system, that's how many EDUs we'll be increasing. 14,000 to 100,000 partners. So let's go to the partnership for construction of the plant. Okay, and so that's one of the other things that we're working on is for right now with the private partnership. The private partnership is going to help the development of a plant there. They said they would help us with that. So we're going to have a plant and customers right there. We don't have to put a pipe in the ground the entire distance because that pipe is extremely expensive to go that whole distance.

That was kind of Ethel Morgan's suggestion as well, wasn't it, to have one plant on one end and one on the other end?

That was before my time.

Because that's several millions of dollars just to get between place to place. Did I just understand you were planning on having two plants, one over in a row, and then moving The rest of it to Helmsburg?

So with the Lake Lemon project, as of right now, the draft plan, nothing's set in stone, is there is a plant on North Shore that would serve the Lake Lemon area. So we do not have to have that pipe in the ground to get all the way back because that pipe is cost prohibitive.

Okay, so there's going to be a new plant for Lake Lemon and it's not going to Helmsburg? At this time, that is our plan, yes.

That's the idea, okay. But with Helmsburg wanting to expand, so the private money has nothing to do with Helmsburg, it's more into the Lake Lemon area?

It's around the Lake Lemon area, yes. I'm not sure exactly where in that area, but yeah, it is in that area.

So, okay. Wasn't expecting that, but that's kind of common sense, kind of told me moving it all the way to Helmsburg was a bit

And in the end, if there were a lot of customers in between, was that Bear Wallow and Helmsburg, if there was density there, that's a different discussion. But there's residences per mile is very low. So you're essentially building a pipe to nowhere. And that pipe is expensive per mile. And in the end, what our focus is going to be is cost effective. We don't want to spend money. We don't have to. We want to have the lowest cost of ownership that we can. and that's what our goal is going to be. And whatever that means it is, that's how we would design that system. So.

Okay. But remember, Bean Blossom, we're planning on that in the Helmsburg expansion.

Yes, yes, so thank you for that. So in the end, the Bean Blossom project that would go from Helmsburg East up to the Brownies, essentially, in that area, that's still planning on funneling right back into Helmsburg. So when we do find the funds for that, through state, federal, local agencies. The plan is build that pipe and it goes straight into Helmsburg. So if we had the money today, we're about a year from bidding just like Helmsburg would be today. So once we get that money, we restart that timer of being a year out, which hopefully would give them enough time where we can work on expanding their plans and getting that done.

Okay. And so in saying that, the original plan was to go to $100,000 per day capacity, that would then reduce the capacity plan since Lake Lemon would have, I think, was initially included in the projections of what the operating capacity was supposed to be, correct? Lake Lemon is how many thousand per day?

Let me check. I'm sorry, yeah. Let me check. I need to do this because I can't talk for the damn time.

Hopefully you can hear me. The 100,000 gallon per day plant cabinet that got expanded to that, would certainly accommodate what we have currently designed for Bean Blossom area. But remember, when we look at the, and you'll see that in one of these new documents up here, our strategic planning activity, when you look at what we see across the northern portion of the county, there is Woodland Lake, Little Fox Lake, you go north, there is Lake LaSalle. Those areas, when you start thinking about, well, where should they go? They should flow downhill toward Bean Blossom into Helmsburg. So the expansion of the Helmsburg plant as a regional plant still makes absolutely perfect sense. And that's what we've been talking to these folks about for years, back when Jenny was on this. We have that in mind, but all of that is in phases and chunks in order to make it financially feasible to do it. Lake Lemon, on the other issue, is out to the west far enough with enough customers around the whole lake to make sense for a treatment plant to be built for it. And to correct an issue about hometown engineering, when hometown engineering did their PER, which was in 2019, Ethel Morgan was the engineer, and she came back with a recommendation to SRF, to Helmsburg, and to Brown County RSD that two treatment plants should be built from an economics perspective. And that's how she looked at it. From a logical perspective, I think the one at Helmsburg and one at Lake Lemon makes sense. Ethel said, one at Lake Lemon, one at Bean Blossom, and keep Helmsburg as is. That was her recommendation. That's what's in that report. You can read it. Ron.

I, Dan, if I'm remembering right, I don't know that you would call what you're talking about a satellite sewer system. Because IDEM supposedly didn't want one little sewer plant over here and one over there. From my understanding, they wanted to kind of join them. You're right. What's your take on that? I mean, is that going to be considered a... A satellite? It sounds like it's going to be bigger than, four or five times bigger than Helmsburg.

It'll probably, at least initially it will be. The Lake Lemmon potential customer base around there is well over 800 residents around Lake Lemmon. That's large enough for an operation that will be very sustainable. We're probably looking at what Helmsburg has today and then adding beam blossom to it And then as we pick up the other pieces that I just mentioned, it can start to grow to a several hundred customer-based treatment plant. Again, a very operational set in the past in skill sets. What they don't want to see is more of the plants that are, or systems that include a plant that are being built that are 65 to 85, maybe 100 customers. Those are very small and very inefficient when you think about the cost to operate. So they're looking at, as much as you can, regionalization, meaning bringing some of those together, some of those smaller plants together. So that's why we're looking and have looked for a long time at the idea of beam blossom makes sense to go to Helmsburg, to let that become a more regional plant. As we evaluated it, as time goes on and we see all of these PERs that have been done, we looked at the question of Does it make sense now to still think in terms of pumping Lake Lemon back to Helmsburg? And the answer is no. What makes sense is a treatment plant there. And so we're working on a public-private relationship that allows us to start an initial construct for a collection system and an initial construct for a treatment plant, all of which will be expandable over time. That's the current status of that.

What's that going to cost to build a plant for 800 customers?

Oh, I don't know that number off the top of my head.

How many years is that at? 20?

I mean, I wish Steve was here. He's our Lake Lemon representative. My mic just got really quiet, by the way.

I can hear you. Okay, you can hear me, that's fine. Well, it's basically got to be done in like six, seven, maybe $8 million chunks before SRF in order to get grant money to do that, right? So if you wanted to put an $800... I plan in large enough for 800 customers. We're not going to get enough grant money in a cycle to do that, right? So it's got to be phased out, which is what we have. We have it broken down into several phases.

And credit to Helmsburg as well. Designing an AeroMod-style system, you can expand that well. You don't have to redesign everything. You just add up. So as Helmsburg gets more and more flow going to their treatment plant, You're expanding it. You're not bulldozing it and starting over.

So that means that the upgrade that they're doing now is moving them in the right direction to go with increased capacity and expansion.

Yes, and it's not in, I would say, it's more than an upgrade. It's a complete demolition, remodeling facility. So you're going from an apple to an orange, and the orange you can keep building on.

Okay.

Back to Lake Lemon, I know one time I think you had the support for the Monroe County Commissioners to expand that service because I think Lake Lemon splits in half between Monroe County and Brown County. So is part of that private public partnership, does that include Monroe County developers as well, their county government as well, to help defray some of these costs so their customers can be served? Are you going to expand territories to include parts of Monroe County?

Yeah, so do we have the district right now? We have. So we already have some of that Monroe County district. We've already met with the commissioners there, and we have some of that district. We've met with county commissioners, city of Bloomington utilities, and we have their support as we're able to get more and more customers in that area to keep getting more of that district to get that collection system there.

And when you say more than... You're talking that you expand your territory to include that, and then that territory expansion is approved by IDEM?

Yes. Okay. Great questions, by the way. Thank you for that. So teamwork update. So we were talking about the last couple of commissioner meetings, which I watched online. We were talking about Helmsburg and the CRSD teamwork. So I have a couple of notes here. Basically, Clint had just mentioned hometown engineering in 2019. did a PER for both of our boards at that time. I don't think, I know I wasn't on that board. I'm not sure if either of you were on that board? Okay. So that was the initial PER. That was kind of when we had started really working together. We've done a lot since then. When I joined BCRSD, I know one of the first things I did was we started going to joint meetings and we actually signed a joint agreement in 2022, I think. And basically that joint development agreement lined how we were going to share information. We were going to be open about it, what they were going to work on, what we were going to work on, back and forth. And we had over a dozen joint meetings. I can't remember how many we had, probably closer to 20. So we had a lot of meeting notes about that. And even, I think it was in 2023, HRSD came to us at one of those joint meetings, it was actually Kyle, and said, hey, we have some customers nearby, we want to extend, can you give us some of that district? To us, it made sense. We agreed to it, and so they actually got an added customer base. I think it was about 24. Hopefully I'm not wrong on that number. Ten? Okay. So, okay. So, but we worked with them, signed it with IDEM, and expanded their district. So... The other thing that we've said for a while is one of our goals, we actually had it in the initial joint agreement, is the idea of consolidation. What I know specifically myself and Rich, we've talked about when we had those joint meetings, is at some point it made sense for our boards to join. We were doing enough stuff working together. We were trying to put essentially a trip wire in. When we get so much of a system together, the boards merge for one district. We never got to that. But we've made it no secret that a few of us on the board from BCRC, we wanted that. Okay? I even asked, so I was on a work trip in November of 2025. We had another joint meeting. And I had asked, is there any interest in merging or consolidating and doing that again? And the answer was no. So for right now, that's not... I will correct you on that.

At that meeting, it wasn't the fact that you asked. From the very get-go... you guys were cramming it down our throat that the only solution was for us to merge, and that you guys were telling us that SRF told you specifically that the only way for us to proceed forward was to merge. And we shot you down and said no, and we had a meeting the following day with SRF and asked them that direct question, and they said we had never suggested that you guys had to merge.

If I had asked that question, so in that meeting, I said, is there anything, any set of stipulations that we could agree to that would trip wire a merger? And I mean, I was on a Zoom, I was in China at the time. But I said, is there anything that would do that? And I would still ask that question. Is there ever a situation where we would be able to merge? Yes. Would merging, merging? Consolidation merge, yeah.

Okay, would it? money more available to do the projects?

I don't think it would change that one way or another. I think funding sources or funding sources and being able to write the grants and being able to talk to the people that have the money is the big driver for that. But I would know it reduces overhead. So when you get to a larger utility, you can reduce overhead.

If you're building one over Lake Lemon, kind of like way over there, and they're extending what they've already got and then taking on Bean Blossom. Just thinking about it, I don't know that a merger would help Helmsburg. If yours is plumb over there and you're really not taking care of anything in between and they need to go east to Bean Blossom, just a thought and nothing, just.

And the first thought to come to my mind, coming from an engineering side, is fewer lawyers, fewer accountants, fewer maintenance staff. You have that redundancy and effort. So if you look at where the rate structures come from and where that money is getting charged, that is a significant portion of the sewer treatment cost. It's the people doing the work. And reducing the people cost on that, you do get an economy of scale there. So you do get to a large enough utility where you need the additional person.

What about Nalbom? How many customers has Nalbom got? Do you guys know? I'm going to look back here again.

I know it's 60 or 80, but one of their customers is gigantic.

It's not 180, but it's over 90.

And Helmsburg's got about 80? 64 currently. We're going to be adding 10 with the project that's coming up, so it will be 74.

Wow. So the Lake Lemon project's Like a big one.

It is a big one, yeah. I believe Nashville has what? Less than 900? So it would be equal to what Nashville has now.

If we could fully bill out Lake Lemon, it would equal Nashville.

Now, Nashville's just really upgraded what they've done. I don't know what their capacity is now, but I would think Nashville's capacity has raised quite a bit.

I'm sure it is too, yeah. They're mostly commercial too versus... which Lake Lemon and what Helmsburg and Bean Blossom is more residential, so keep that in mind too. So I mean, the fact that Nashville is more commercial, they're probably gonna have a lot more potential flow that they're gonna have to treat at the plant.

Why not a separate RSD in Lake Lemon? It'd be similar to Helmsburg, but Lake Lemon, they're closer to their customers. Why not a separate RSD for Lake Lemon And then really expand the territory for Helmsburg to cover Bean Blossom and your other quarter. And then you guys, mission accomplished on the plan, the planning for super service in Brown County. I mean, you've done a phenomenal job on the plans and strategies and all that kind of stuff. So great job on that one. But then when it comes to execution, who's actually processing, who's dealing with the customers, what's the most efficient way going forward? Yeah.

Yeah, so here, I was like, let me hop in on that. So if you split the district, if everyone gets their own sewer district, again, it's the labor cost.

Well, we're not talking everyone. We're talking 800 customers of water. We could have it like one in Helmsburg, and then whatever they expand to include being Blossom Plus.

Well, and I mean, that could have happened, but a lot of the, what's the number? It's a good question. I'm trying to think of the... There's a number somewhere, and I wish I knew it off the top of my head, that Indiana Regulatory says a utility, they hope it to get to a certain size to be considered stable. And I think that number in customers is thousands, some 2,000, 3,000. I can't remember the number. I wish I had it. So whenever you're suggesting to have a lot of smaller utilities, essentially, that's keeping you underneath that critical number.

Like Dalbo and Nashville and Helzberg.

Yeah. So small changes within the sewer district or within the utility in general can cause dramatic swings in terms of quality of that service. Whereas if you get to a larger company, think of a Brown County Watering, that they have enough of that customer base that they are a less at-risk utility. So the way I would answer that question is, in my opinion, I would want to get closer to that number of being a less at-risk utility than to keep it smaller and have it be seen to Indiana as more of an at-risk utility.

Well, we've got two plants, Ellsberg and Nalbone, in Nashville that have been successful for 20-plus years. I know Nalbone has just basically got new leadership within the Nalbone. They're managing theirs. They're close to the customers. Their customers voting for their board members versus having their commissioners appointments. So they've got a proven track record. Ellensburg has a proven track record, 20 plus years. And then of course Nashville has that proven track record as well. So the smaller plants are working for us. Those RSD board members are closest to their customers.

We are our customers. And that's true, yeah. Being on the board where you are leading your customers is valuable. And that number, I'm thinking, is just what they're defining as at risk and what risk means. So how things could go into either financial or strategic problems with those utilities as they would get smaller. And in my opinion, looking at that, trying to get closer to that goal to reduce that risk. And let me take an action and find that, and I'll get it back to you of where that number came from.

Well, Matt, I mean, the track record for the two RSDs are proof enough.

And what I would say, go ahead, sorry.

No, you go ahead.

And Helmsburg and Nauvone and even Nashville, they've been running their utilities for a very long time. Me being on BCRSD, looking at what my understanding of that would be, is I would want, I think it would, grand scheme, if we were to look at things, it better serves the customer to have one large utility like a Brown County Water serving a whole area compared to 10 different water companies serving 10 different smaller areas, 10 different sewer companies.

That's pretty significant. You're talking about centralizing all the RSTs into one in the Grand County RST for the whole county?

Potentially, yes. I would think about that. Thanks for bringing that up. To me, in my opinion there, that would be more efficient for all of us.

trying to look at the big picture, the comprehensive plan. If you just do that over there, that's gonna be a growth area. Just like Helmsburg expanding, that's gonna be a growth area. Looking through the proposed comprehensive plan, going out toward Nullabone, going out toward Bloomington, those are the areas that's probably gonna see in the next few years the most growth. that's that's going to make a big difference on now once you do the sewer thing the electric the power lines the water lines have you looked far enough ahead to see what all that's going to look like i've not looked at water or any of that and i i'm not looking at that in terms of growth i want to be clear about that service as a developer to build stuff i'm looking in the end

Years ago, I worked at the EPA. I was just interning there, and that's kind of where my patch came from. I just wanted to try to do the best for clean water. So I look at, who are the people served today? How can I try to help them and try to help their systems? I'm not looking at this like, hey, if I get a sewer system in there, I can put up a ton of use. That's not even on my mind. So I'm looking at, how can I treat the people that are there today and help them out? Because in the end, I look at Lake Lemon. I'm like, I want to make that the cleanest lake I possibly can.

Wrong. Nashville developed a master wastewater strategic plan that goes out within two miles of their quarters. They go to Annandale, they go to Belmont, and they go out to Nava. Anyway, their plan is to expand, but they link annexation to sewer service, so I think that would probably be interesting.

That's what it backpacks the people out there that really want the annexation?

Well... I don't think that's ever even popped through in this county, but anyway. But that's Nashville, how that master plan would expand to support that development along those corridors.

Anyway, it's on paper. One of the things, Ron, that comes to mind when you ask that question, when we look at, and as Matt said, like the water company, when they viewed the county, they viewed the whole of the county and not ten different little water companies to service and you get all kinds of economies of scale and what you ultimately end up with is being able to provide service to all of the customers at a consistent rate and by consolidating the sewer districts what we do is eliminate territorial competition so if there's a house sitting out there that's between this district and that district Who serves it? Now you get into the actual discussion of how do you transfer from one district to the other district that territory. We did it very easily three years ago or so when Helmsburg asked for additional territory around Helmsburg. It made absolute perfect sense to all of us. So it was an easy deal. We had to go through formal requests to item to transfer territory. And we did that. We took letters and conversations and that sort of thing. And we want to eliminate that situation as best we can. And the concept of a system-wide sewer district then can have operating units like a Helmsburg operating unit, a Lake Lemon operating unit, a Nalbone operating unit, Nashville if it should enter the frame. All of those things then can have a common oversight management, common billing, common operations. We reduce the size of equipment needed. The customer gets the benefit. Not the districts. It doesn't matter about the district. That's just a bunch of people that have to manage it. If you've got a bunch of small ones, you've got a bunch of people that have to manage it. What you're after, at least what we think we're after, is good water quality and efficient service to customers at the lowest rate. Because at the end of the day, that's who's paying the bill. And they're doing it to clean up the waterways. So we're looking at that question of capacity across the whole of the county, not individual or sub-units.

Well, the territory changed. 2013, the commissioners asked then the Bean Blossom RSD to take on more territory. That was a memo from the commissioners, went to the boards, memo to the Bean Blossom at the time RSD as a memo, IDEM approved both since both boards. So it's a pretty simple process. Memo, memo, IDEM approves as a one pager. So I've got the documentation on that. So it's a pretty easy process to expand that territory. I'm not saying it's difficult. On the water quality, that's a different topic. We both exchange opposing views on water quality and that kind of thing. Anyway, so consolidation, I kind of get that one. I'd love to see the numbers. Kevin, same way. You're going to show, hey, we can consolidate and keep your bills lower. Sure, I'd love to see that. I think customers would too. I think that would be a challenge. Have you looked at the trend on the sewer bills from Nashville's wastewater? I've heard the trend. I've I don't think if you're looking at low cost service, you might start with those numbers. They've got a pretty good website out there.

What I think you're going to imply is that their rates have gone up. They're always going to go up. I also think you would agree that they're probably being the most efficient they can possibly be with their rates. I don't think they're charging a lot of overhead on those rates. There may be some discussion in there, but they're probably charging what they believe to be the best rate that they can for their customers.

Well, Matt, the challenge is how much federal money you get to buy down those utility rates. I don't know what it is now. I think at one time it was estimated that we could get the grants to buy down the monthly cost from, what, 65 to 85. That was years ago. I don't know what they're projecting now. It's probably over 100, isn't it?

I know it's gone up, I don't know it, because if I say it, I'll be wrong by it.

But that was the number, that was the target that they were planning to get you grant money to buy down that bill to the customers. Yes. And so that's not inexpensive.

Oh, no, that's significant grant funding. I mean, just like with Helmsburg, I believe their wastewater treatment plant was 100% grant, or almost 100%, maybe 90%. But there was no way that plant would have been built without almost complete grant funding from the federal government.

Well, and then it's the income levels of that particular area as well supported that one.

And fun fact, I know when the last census happened that the bean blossom side is actually classified as a higher income range than the other side. So you actually get less funding going that way, which was surprising to us. We were like, that didn't seem reasonable.

It was surprising to us when we saw the LMI numbers coming in throughout the county. That was surprising as well.

I did notice when I was looking through the agenda that you updated the ordinance to change it from working together to actually changing the HRSD boundaries on the agenda.

So it does... No, that's what we identified in the beginning. That was a request to expand the territory to include the customers they're going to support.

Because I believe at the April meeting you said it was an agreement to work together. Well, that's what we're doing now, right? And now it looks like it's being listed as, no, we're going to make a resolution to change the boundary.

No. My understanding is that you guys need to come to consensus about how to best work through the territory.

Because on the agenda right here, a letter of support of changing HRSD boundaries to include future customers.

Letter of support, that's correct.

To change the boundaries.

We can't, fishers can't change any boundaries. The process is pretty simple. We can write a letter of support based on the desires or the requests from the Helmford Regional Service. Okay, sir. We can certainly provide a letter of support. It goes basically to the Brown County RSD, and that's where the discussion becomes. And then I didn't get involved in that. We don't have any authority to dictate anything other than provide a letter of support for the Pelmsburg RSD board.

You are correct on that. I do know at the last meeting, the resolution was to work together. It was listed here, and I was surprised when I saw that walking in.

I'm not following. You're working together. This is the start, isn't it?

In working together, what you're saying is the district that we currently have, you're saying we're recommending that that is now Helmsburg's. So instead of asking us to work together, you're going to carve out a section and say that's now Helmsburg.

The target is June 17th.

That is a district change.

I'm going to stand here and make this clear and we're not going down this path. The plan and my expectation is that you two RSDs get together and work through this.

And I would love to do that. I would love to have that joint agreement. I would love to have that interlocal. I want to see something. And that's where I'm standing.

And that's where I'm standing as a commissioner saying, stand, go through, identify what is in the best interest of the constituents of this county. Okay. That's where I stand. So, Kyle, I'll meet weekly with you. No putting each other on the spot. Let's behave ourselves.

I would love to do that. I will make the time.

Okay.

So that's what I expect.

Okay. All right, and I'll report back next month. I'm sure I don't know why I don't speak for that. I won't speak for the other two members of the board.

Kevin, that's going to be required for any boundary change. It's going to require cooperation and agreement by both boards. Correct.

So, again, if it doesn't come to consensus and it doesn't do it, and you work through your process and understand that there's a state legislative entity that has to be, or a state control and a regulatory agency that goes through that, so that's where we're going.

Okay, and that was the last little bit of the update that I had. Do you have any other thoughts? No, I don't. All right, thank you all. Thank you.

May I ask this gentleman a question?

Sure, go ahead, sure. Introduce yourself, if you would.

Yeah, thank you for reminding me. Sherry Mitchell, where'd you go, Matt? Oh, I'm back here. Thank you. What's your reluctance to let Helmsburg have that property around their district? You seem reluctant, sorry.

So that's a good question. So we've been doing a lot of effort. I mean, you can see a lot of our design work. We've been really trying to get pipes in the ground to try to get that system done. In the end, I... think that trying to lower administrative costs is key. I've worked in the government for years, working at Cummins for years. We always talk about overhead costs, trying to keep those numbers low. I understand overhead costs. But in the end, so this is now, this is my hot opinion. I cannot speak for these board members at this point. In the end, I care about water quality. If you were to tell me we were to have sewers where they were needed and no bad septic systems, we're going to be contaminating watersheds and we had what was needed, I'm going to be happy. That's my own personal opinion. If you're telling me that we're going to be in this future dream state where people are taken care of, I'm happy. We did it.

Matt, you sound like you're deflecting, buddy.

So in the end, why am I reluctant to it? Why am I reluctant to it?

Yes.

What? The commissioners are, what a territory change would imply is that we didn't do our job. No, why would you think that? I feel like we didn't do our job.

Why would you think that? The boys got, they got money.

And basically that's, that's my opinion where it is right now. And what the commissioners asked for, I want to sit down and work. So let's start. Let's start there and work on it and get something figured out.

Okay? So your only reluctance to allowing Helmsburg to take on 60 more, however many more they're getting in their plant, is that it makes you look bad?

No, I didn't say that.

What's your reluctance in letting them have, is it 60, Kyle? Am I making that number up with your new plant? You could add 60 more, like double?

At least with what they're putting in now. Okay, so about 60. So about 60. It's out of order.

It's out of order.

I'm asking a question.

Can I ask a question? Just ask questions. Yeah, you're fine.

Thank you. Anyway, so what is your reluctance to allow him to take 60 more customers into his district, especially when you can't service those customers now? And you're actually looking at going all the way out to Lemon, which I love, by the way. I think it's fabulous. I hope that all works out just perfect. But there's no reason to hem these guys up or to even get into a debate with you about taking those extra 60 customers that you can't service now or whenever that's going to happen. So why don't you just give up the territory and we'll all be done here.

I want to bring it back up to the board. Question asked. That's something that could be addressed at a later time. Appreciate the time. Cotton City, and we can provide you time on our next commissioner meeting if you'd like to present. Katie, you can do it now if you've got comments you'd want to make on their presentation.

Adrian O'Shea, president of Helmsburg Regional Sewer District. to add on to what Matt said about the merging. We did feel pressure in that particular meeting. Rich and I particularly did not get along with that conversation. And our biggest issue is if we merge, we're one entity, right? We can only go for so much money. We are hoping to get them to a point where they can get something done And then we can see about merging. That makes sense on down the line, but we need to get to the finish line on a project. In 20 years, we now have two different plants and multiple expansions under our belt. They're done. This plant is funded. It's being built. We're bidding right now. In the same 20-some years that these guys have been around, we haven't gotten to the finish line yet. with anything, and we want to help with that. We believe that the people in Bean Blossom should get sewer if they want it. We felt the reason that when Kyle came here to give an update on what, in our position of where our plant was, that kind of started this back and forth. We want to work with them, but we feel that we could take on the Bean Blossom group and that project in its entirety and get it to the finish line. We do. We would approach it differently. We have a very hard crowd to win over at the Helmsburg group because of the limited amount of money. But we have persisted and we got the approval from our group. We just passed our new rate ordinance tonight. which will keep us in taking care of all the equipment and servicing all that. Having kept the rates the same, customers would have had to take on that debt if your pump goes out in a week after we hand it over to you. We were trying to put provisions in place, but they would be responsible for that. They don't have the money for that. So we are going to do everything we can to try to get sewers to grow. I agree with Matt, economy of scale. Eventually I want to be able to sign a rate ordinance where we just dropped it, you know, for all the customers. But we felt when we last talked here that that's what we were interested in is working with them to take that over. We think that we can get it to the finish line. That's the biggest thing. Yes, Rob.

I think what I understood... last time was, I believe it was Mr. Laggins, and correct me if I'm wrong, I believe he said if you guys could get the money to go to Bing Blossom, more power to you. I believe that's what I heard. And then if you guys are going to do Lake Lemon, and Jens concentrated on Lake Lemon, and then after you guys get all that up and going, if Jens wanted to merge, then that would somewhat make sense.

It does. To get to a point where we can, as Matt said, service everybody together, that makes more sense. We just have to get to a point. Like right now, it doesn't make sense for us to merge because we've got all the customers and assets and we are currently servicing all those people.

Does that make sense back there, sir?

I'm listening. I mean, having pipes in the ground, having capital assets, you can borrow a lot of money against it, you can take bonds against it. There's different business opportunities you have compared to where we're starting. So there is an economy. Go ahead. There seems to be just

some disconnects here that are just too obvious to me. Okay. One of the things that we and this guy and those folks have worked with us on up to this point is the understanding that Bean Blossom is a project that we've been pursuing for a good long time. Got a lot of funding for it. Got engineering done for design work.

And we'll continue to seek

funding for the construction of Bean Blossom with the absolute plan that it's going down the road to the west to Helmsburg for treatment. That's in the works, been in the works. There seems to be a disconnect that says we don't want to do that. That's exactly what we want to do. It's what we've been saying we want to work with and get done. Right now, the limitation is twofold. We don't have money. from SRF because of their overall budget reduction across the state to start that build-out for bean blossom. They've advised us of that. The amount is too large. The second thing, which can happen but hasn't, we've got to stop. We hit an all-stop with Helmsburg on an interlocal agreement that's for future bringing bean blossom flow to Helmsburg. We want an interlocal agreement that simply says, down the road, when everybody gets funded, you get funded for a larger plant, Brown County gets funded to construct bean blossom collection, there will be an interlocal agreement that has a real basic rate structure format that we'll look at at the time. It's cost basis. That's one hold. We can't get anywhere with it. If we need anything at all, I think what both boards need is that interlocal agreement completed. And it's not for today. It's for the future, for when we get funding for both the collection and the treatment, and it will be a fair basis, and we'll know what it will be calculated on. It's just a simple rate structure, a format for it, but we can't get there. I would like to have an agreement that we get to that point. Now, that we'll sit down and really talk about.

Because that's constructive. We sent one in February and we heard nothing from you guys all the way up until last month. So how about let's table that, Kyle? Let me point out one more thing, please. Okay. They just said during their presentation they took a million dollars that they had slated to finish the bean blossom design and took it from bean blossom now and threw it to Lake Lemon. Okay? Why didn't you use the money that you had for bean blossom to finish bean blossom? At least the design of it, and then you'd have somewhere to go. And you'd have numbers to give to us to say, we need to treat this much flow. And then we can say, okay, that means our plant needs to go from 14,000 gallons a day to this. And then we'd be moving forward. But now you've taken basically the money you had for that community and took it away from them to throw it somewhere else And now Bean Blossom is left hanging with nothing.

That's just partially true.

It is partially true, but it's not the whole truth. So even if right now we did make an agreement and they decided to let us take over Bean Blossom, I can't do squat with it. Because the money that they had slated for it, I no longer have ability to use because they took it and went somewhere else with it. And now I've got to start from scratch on that, start approaching SRF or other agencies again, just to be able to finish something that was taken partially to the finish line. And now, if everything had been on schedule from day one of what they were supposed to do, and we would have been building a plant bigger, 14,000 gallons a day, but SRF said no, in December that they weren't far enough along on the collection system to justify us building a big enough plant to accommodate it. That's why they pigeonholed us down to smaller, okay? Now we can't do anything with it, and if our rates, if that had all gone through, our rates would have been under $100 a month with that project. We just passed an ordinance raising our rates to $118 a month for sewer service, guys. I mean, with the expectation that we're designing and we're building this plant to be able to expand it, not only for Bean Blossom, but also for Lake Lemon. And now we're being told that now Lake Lemon's not coming to us. So what is that going to mean for my rates now going forward? I'm $118 a month now. For how long in time might have now the possibility to add more customers from Bean Blossom and potentially lower it? Now it's true. Sorry.

So there's a little tension there. That's how our meetings went. And so in the end we felt that if we were separate entities we could each go for separate funding for the same goal. Once they get done, each of these projects, then we can merge. That's what we were looking for. And as Kyle said, we have sent the local agreement. We have updated it. We can't give them numbers. We can't give them a structure because we have no clue how many people they can bring to us. That's what matters. And without the easements and that kind of thing, we're not going to get any further with any of that. So I just wanted to come back up and tell you guys that that's the tough part that we've had. I have no problem talking to them. But we felt that if We took over the area. They're not the middleman. There doesn't have to be any money coming into their area from those customers. They would just be direct customers to Helmsburg, the bean blocks of people. So that was our idea of how to keep this lower and to use, as Matt said, one resource for the area. That's what we were thinking. So that's why we approached you guys about support.

All right.

Bill Austin. Sorry. So, I'm glad Kyle brought that up because I think one of the tensions you guys are seeing, and I think some of you guys know this, maybe not, I've been on the outside observing all this, and so I realize, because I've been in the government stuff, right, that there's pockets of money and there's ways of spending. And I think whether it's Nilebone or Bean Blossom or Helmsburg, you've got people not getting paid for doing any of this. Right? So everybody's doing this because they think it's important. But you do have a situation, maybe it's good funding, maybe it's something else, where the folks at Helmsburg have been going on 20 years As you heard recently, now paying $118 a month. It was in the 90s for a long time. I don't know what their current budget is, but they've got something like, what, $20,000 that much at least in savings? Or do you even have that much? We don't have any savings, right? Yeah. So they're operating with a high monthly cost serving and making the system work And you guys know what Helmsburg is like. $118 a month is a lot for those people. So people working the system had been for 20 years, and they barely had enough money to pay for the pumps. And we're talking millions of dollars flying around, right? So just looking at it as an observation, it seems pretty strange to be talking about all these millions of dollars projects and the kind of money that's been available and the struggles of the people that are actually running the system and serving the people. Okay? Thanks, Bill.

Anybody else? Okay, bring it back up to the table. I guess my final... Final comments. Is 85% of the SRF mandates, that's a concern to me, is what does that look like? Do you have the 85%? I mean, if they're basing that as a qualification for passive money, I think that's pretty significant. So I guess I'm curious on that one. And Matt, on the water quality, we can talk about that offline. I think we've changed articles in the Democrat on that one. Your own study says that pasture land is, figure 33 in your water quality study details that pasture land loads more E. coli to Grand County streams than other sources under all modified septic failure modeling scenarios. Only if 100% of documented septic systems are failing do they contribute a significant volume of E. coli to the entirety of brown catty. And then again, we've talked about the samples where you identify 50%. I'm done, then you can follow me. That 50%, I don't know what it was, you identified testing for human-caused E. coli. I addressed that in the article that was a response to your criticism that said, hey, 80%, how many systems could be contributed to that water sample? And I'm still waiting. I guess my question was if that water quality study was changed in any way, has it? Has that conclusion changed? Is there a water engineer that changed that?

That initial study was a scientist, I'm going to phrase it that way, they performed a whole county simulation. We're going to look at the area, we're going to run a bunch of models, and we're going to come up with theoretical possibilities. So the entire county, it looked at all of that, and that's what that graph that you're referring to is, the whole county. Now, Micro versus macro are very different. You're looking at the whole county, and you take an average of the entire county, and you put it in that pie chart. That's what that simulation was. Now make it a small area. The small area simulation does not match the large area simulation. So when you make it a micro level, we decided to do a test instead. You know what? The simulation on this small area is not going to work. We're going to take a bucket of water and have someone test it. We actually did it twice. Did it a couple years ago, three, four years ago, and then we did it again last year. And the actual test didn't match the model. The actual test said most of it was human. And what does that tell us? Do we believe the test, or do we believe the model of the entire county being a representation of Bean Blossom Creek, for example? The test that we took a bucket out of Bean Blossom, sent it out for testing, and came back, said most of that was from human source. So that graph that you always refer to, remember, countywide simulation of a model, not of a test, of a theoretical value. But when we did the test, it disagreed and actually said that it was a different situation, which meant the problem was worse than the model portrayed. That's the best way I can answer that.

You're calling a sampling a simulation?

The sampling you took, you're calling that a simulation? No, the simulation was the entire county.

I understand that. At 33, you had an independent... research independent water quality scientists to put that together. And I don't think they made up that model on their own. I assume that was an industry standard kind of approach.

They probably used some kind of model that tried to do a representative sample of our county.

And I imagine that was an accepted standard within that particular area of expertise.

Probably, and I'll overphrase it, that was probably the best simulation we had at the time of how to try to represent what the county was.

Well, even then, their sampling said even if you had 100%, the significant problem would still be pastureland. So a sample, when you took a sample, that's not a simulation.

No, that is, we actually took a bucket in the stream.

You took a sample. We took several samples, and then... And you're extrapolating that sample, and you're saying, well, since it applied to this particular sample, every home in that particular area that may be contributed to that has a failing septic system?

Is that your conclusion? No, the density... of that sample gives you your best guess theory. So if you look at E. coli density, and you look at, if you do colifage, which is human versus animal, and you say, okay, of the E. coli that's in there, a certain percentage is from human, and so many, the loading of animals, and I'm getting out of my depth here, so if I'm speaking wrong, I do apologize. that, okay, a human and an animal contribute so much E. coli per organism into the stream.

I'm not challenging your sample results. I'm not challenging that at all. How many failing septic systems could be contributing to that sample? Off the top of my head, I don't know.

But what we do know is that the number was significant. There was a lot of E. coli over standards, and the Bean Blossom Watershed is listed as an impaired watershed. impaired waterway.

It was listed as impaired because of the E. coli sample in both pasture land and I guess now that you've validated the human cause. What you don't know is the number of systems that may be contributing to that. And if you're familiar with the 80-20 rule, 8% of the problem could be due to 20% of the cause E. coli in that water sample goes away, you still have a problem with pasture land. It's not unique, it's common to agricultural based counties. We're not unique, I think Monroe County had a similar problem.

So your hypothesis here, I got this. Your hypothesis here would be, could a regional sewer district go out to communities and help fix their septic systems. Say, hey, sign up. We'll help fix your septic system. I didn't say that at all. But if we could target, I as a sewer district, you as a commissioner, cannot go to anyone's property, I don't believe, and say, I want to test your septic system. I want to see if your system's failing. I don't believe we can do that. Health department can't. Health department can't. I can't. It's Brown County Regional Sewer District.

It's probable cause.

You have to have a reason as to why you think that septic system may be failing. I think you guys identified what a failing septic system might look like. Or at least the state has.

Right now, I can go to the health department. There's legal channels you can go through and get that. That probably takes a very long time. It's probably also very expensive. If we know the problem is there, for me, again, my personal end goal is water quality. We actually, a few months ago, in one of our board meetings, we actually had the discussion of, could we as a sewer district support people's septic systems? Why not? Could we say, hey, for a certain monthly rate, we'll pump your septic tank and we'll maintain it for you? That was actually a discussion we had. Because in the end, if our goal is water quality, why couldn't we consider that as an option? Which would talk to exactly what you're talking about.

Well, it's a different issue. My point is...

It's a similar issue.

The sample doesn't identify, and you don't, you need additional research to determine how many systems are being contributed to that, the human cost you pull on your paper. That's it. That's a fact. We don't know that. We don't know how many systems could be contributed to that problem.

We don't know. And we don't have the means to do that. You cannot guarantee to an exact amount of what that is. We know 40% don't have preference.

That doesn't mean anything.

It's not a correlation between no records and failing subjects.

But there's a preponderance of evidence that begins to build that makes you start to think, well, then what is the issue?

Yeah. And Clint, you know, we went back and forth on that one, and I wrote a pretty extensive analysis on your justification, so that's a public record.

Let me see if I understand this correctly. The first time you tested, you didn't distinguish between animal and human The next time you took the bucket, you did just the human?

Great question. Great question. So years ago when we did our study, we did a model. So we did a simulation of it. And then I think right before I joined the board, it was right before I joined, we did a test at 13 sites or something like that. I think eight sites, something like that. And actually did... Oh, thank you. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve sites. So we actually did what was called a colophage test. You pay a company, they essentially put a five gallon bucket in the water at a certain spot. They have a process that they follow. I don't know what that process is. They drive it to a testing site and they have a certain amount of time. It's almost like voting. They have to ensure chain of custody and a bunch of stuff on it. And then they do a test on it and they give us the result back. And then they can tell on that test, when you put the bucket in and drive it quickly to the lab, is it human or is it animal? That was the last time you tested? That was four years ago when we did that test. And last year on the board I said, well, if I believe in data, the data should repeat. I want to pay to test it again. So we tested again. And the data still said majority was from human source. So what that tells me is we just didn't get a fluke runoff in a spike system. The numbers are still high in the area. And what you would want to look at is if you're looking at any area to potentially put in a sewer system, you don't want an area that has low human contact. You want to try to find an area that has interest and has potentially a high failure rate.

So you've tested Lake Lemmon and it's high?

We've tested the Bean Blossom Creek all the way to the, I think we went almost all the way into Lake Lemmon's area. And Lake Lemmon gets tested too by IUSPIA. IUSPIA tests every year. And it's high. And it's high. So at some point, we can't go door to door and test. If someone wanted to volunteer that, obviously they could, but we don't have door to door numbers. You have to use the evidence to say there is a problem. And that's what we did in our reports that we've submitted, the strategic plans and what not. I hope that answers that question.

I was curious if the kids were separating it and getting it down to human and just not saying E. coli.

And I believe the test was done, it was done two weeks after the local farmer had injected animal waste on the ground. It had rained and We did our wire sampling two weeks after that, and there was still way more human waste than there was animal waste. Animal waste is being spread on the ground. Wow.

That tells you there's an issue. It tells you there's always going to be E. coli in our streams as long as we have pasture land.

When you're purposely putting E. coli on the ground and you're testing for unpurposely put in E. coli in the water system and the unpurposed... if you will, is twice as much as what's being laid on the ground, you got a problem.

And I know we've gone back and forth on this. I know we have a disagreement on there. But I do hope I helped answer that simulation versus test question that you had there, that statement there. But that original graph was that simulation, and that's why we tested to see if it matched the model. So thank you.

It helped me. Well, Matt, that's a whole different discussion when you're trying to validate their model based on your samples. That's a whole different discussion. All right. I guess we'll wrap that particular up. Guys, I'll bring it back up to you. We have an agenda item for a follow-up on June 17th. If you guys are going to meet, have an update you want to provide at our next commissioner meeting, let me know. I'll put it on the agenda. But right now, we've got June 17th on the calendar for where we're at on this whole agreement. Does that make sense up here? Where I'm still at. Okay. Alrighty. That concludes that. The new business then? Well, work in process. We're busy. We've got a lot of things going on. Probably the pending thing is the draft hyperhensile plan. Guys, we've got a second joint session.

26, 6 o'clock.

Yep. I'll send you a summary of what we'll discuss probably on that one. That's about it. Still working with getting some estimates on Pumpkin Ridge Road and then of course the bill operating transfer that's in work. Other than that, any last minute comments from anyone?

No, wait. Let's go to the

So I just wanted to give a big shout out to R.L. Buckson for finishing Bridge 20, which is Hoover Road in Gainesville. They finished a week early, got it open, got it going, just beautiful. We're going to do the final report on May 26th. Also a big shout out to the crew for keeping up with all the trees and storms and flooding that we have had lately. So they're doing a great job with that. We also closed out our 2025 FEMA flooding money. And we recouped $122,601 for the county funding. Most of that went back into labor, but part of it into equipment and materials. That's just kind of where we're at in the county.

Okay. Great. Thanks, Sandra.

Okay.

Anybody else from the audience? Any last words? i'm sorry i was talking did we skip all the policy stuff yeah okay it's just a working process nothing no updates okay legal yep legal james uh nothing to add from me thank you thank you as you well know i'll make a motion to adjourn all right meeting adjourn thanks everyone