Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Thank you.

Alright, we'll call the Brown County Board of Commissars meeting to order. We'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Alright, welcome everyone. On the agenda, we have minutes No. Okay, we'll wait for next month then. Yeah. Okay. Claims?

I have them in my hand.

Okay.

Counts up when you got two people.

Yeah, I know. So I've taken a look at the claims. I know we didn't have, we weren't going to have minutes, so it wasn't anything that stood out for me.

so I will make a motion that we approve the claim okay that's fine all right roll roll call tim how do you vote yes kevin how do you vote yes ron how do you vote yes okay then we'll hit minutes uh next next meeting i'll start the first thing on the agenda is a presentation by jeff jeff welcome On the Hoosier National Forest program, he's a Hoosier National Forest program advisor and a request for support for federal legislation to expand the Charles Dean, Willis area, Division, Harrison National Rec area. And Vacate Combs Road is on the to-do list. Jeff, can I give you your hand?

You sure can. This is a report that we did with the fair color of the mountains and the humanity of the area we're talking about. Thanks, sir.

Great, thanks a lot.

Well, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity today. I'm here speaking on behalf of the Indiana Forest Reliance as its Hoosier National Forest Program advisor. And we've come here today to ask you to support the reintroduction of federal legislation that would expand the Dean Wilderness in the Hoosier National Forest east to include many of the Brown County National Forest acres that were actually originally included in the first wilderness proposal that was ever made in Indiana more than 50 years ago by then supervisor of the Hoosier National Forest, a man named A. Claude Ferguson. Back in the 70s, he proposed there be an eastern wilderness area in the Hoosier National Forest as part of a system of areas that Congress was considering adding to the wilderness preservation system, which was public forest land out west, mostly in the National Forest, that had been set aside under a law called the Wilderness Act, which doesn't allow for permanent human development structures, habitation, in these areas. It's just they're set aside for trails for recreation and the enjoyment of nature as God intended. You let nature take its course. The human presence is temporary. There are regulations governing the management of wilderness areas that do allow the Forest Service in certain circumstances if there's emergencies to use to enter wilderness areas to fight fires and to fight disease infestations and so on that might become a crisis and to protect public health and safety. I think they can use some mechanized equipment then, but everything is supposed to be as conservative as possible to maintain the natural condition of the forest and allow for people to enjoy it in that condition. Back in 1982, after seven years of debate over the proposal that Claude Ferguson made, and it was actually expanded by Birch 5 to 30,700 acres. It's a wilderness study area that came further west and included lands in the Rowe County and a little bit down at Lawrence County and Jackson County. Eventually, a political compromise was made to get a wilderness bill through because we had aroused a lot of private land under our opposition. People didn't want any private property in either a wilderness area or what's called a wilderness study area, which is where Congress would have the force to study it for five years and then report back on what should be wilderness. So there was a lot of opposition to having private property in it. Ultimately, what happened was we passed a bill in 1982, December 22nd, Public Law 97384 that set aside 12,953 acres of national forest land. It was mostly over in Monroe County, a little bit of Brown County. It was mostly to the west of the Nebo Ridge, Panzer Creek, Bad Hollow area that is where the first wilderness proposals were based, largely in Brown County and some Jackson County land. Let's move to the next slide. In 2022, then U.S. Senator Mike Braun visited the north end of the National Forest, where the Dean Wilderness is, and saw for himself the high use of the Dean Wilderness and the areas in Nebo Ridge that were originally proposed to be wilderness. He decided that, and of course I was actively advocating to him that he do this, but he's a lifelong conservationist. as an abiding love of deep forest. He's also a logger, forester, owns a lot of his own timberland. But he thinks the public lands should be for public purposes, and he saw this as something that was unique in the state of Indiana, or really in the Midwest, and decided he would introduce legislation that would expand the wilderness area back to the areas originally proposed by the Forest Service. So that would increase the size of the Charleston wilderness from its 12,953 acres by 15,300 acres to 28,253 acres, all national forest land. None of the Army Corps land that's in between the Dean Wilderness and Nebo Ridge on the South Fork and the Middle Fork would be included. We've kept that out because the state of Indiana is very opposed to including that land, which they manage for wildlife. management and the Corps of Engineers doesn't want the lands that they, you know, affect when they control reservoir levels in the wilderness either. So in addition to establishing, expanding the wilderness, the bill would establish the Benjamin Harrison National Recreation Area on a near 30,000 additional acres of national forest land that surrounds that expanded wilderness. Named it for our Indiana's president who, unbeknownst to many, was the first president who set aside large areas of public domain out west to be preserved as forest reserves at the time. There were no national forests. They became later the national forests. So we want to celebrate his history as an American conservationist. And so that's why we're calling it that, the Benjamin Harrison National Recreation Area. And this would include no private land, and it will close no roads to private property or restrict access to any cemeteries. We want to be clear that we didn't cause the same mistakes that were made in the past that caused needless opposition. Many of the people who opposed the original wilderness wanted wilderness, they just didn't want the boundaries drawn around their property to include it. And not that the Forest Service was ever proposing to condemn that property, but there'd been a lot of condemnation that had gone on from the North Reservoir, the Rathnace, the park. And so understandably, people didn't trust the situation. And so these boundaries are drawn to exclude all private property Now, the purpose of the Benjamin Harrison National Recreation Area, this sort of mirrors the wilderness area management. It's to protect the Monroe Reservoir water supply. Almost all the acres that are in the Pleasantwood Purchase Unit that drain either to the south fork or the middle fork, that are national forest acres, would be set aside in the NRA to protect the water of Monroe Reservoir and to promote recreation and preserve the aesthetic beauty of the land. That doesn't mean there wouldn't be logging in the Benjamin Harrison National Recreation Area. It would still allow for logging and prescribed fires and other management that the Forest Service might elect to do under the National Forest Management Plan. But it would cause the Forest Service to develop a plan to achieve those aims for the recreation area, protecting the aesthetic value and promoting recreation and protecting the water supply. And is to do that in five years in concert with an advisory committee that would be appointed that would include officials from local government on this advisory committee. And so there's a little bit of land that's in Brown County that actually drains to the Middle Fork of Salt Creek that is not included. It's north of 135. But for the sake of the management of avoiding going across 135, we decided that that land didn't need to be included. Several hundred acres up there and two blocks. So moving to the next slide. But essentially what we're trying to do here, and this reflects it, is set aside rugged very erosion-prone national forest land to protect them from municipal water supply. And here you see a top of the south side of Browning Mountain where the rock is just uncovered by the subsiding forest ground and that siltstone. And then there's one of many streams like that with those shelf falls that would be in the expanded part of the Charles, the deep wilderness in the other picture. Next slide. I want to stress that this legislation was drawn carefully to allow mountain biking and utility easements that existed in the area of the expanded wilderness to continue and to not be interrupted as a result of the expanded wilderness. In other words, there are six mountain biking trails inside the expanded wilderness area that are technically not in the wilderness. 100 feet each side of the center line of the trail is part of what's called a non-wilderness corridor. Now, there's several dozen precedents for that in the wilderness preservation system. Actually, more. There's many, many wilderness areas. Most of them have non-wilderness corridors in them. Some have many. Most have just a few. but we have a number here, six for these mountain biking trails to continue, and then there's one for the Smith Valley Telephone Company, the fiber optics on Deckard Ridge there, you can see it on the north side of the reservoir. I don't know if you can, I don't have a pointer here, so I can't point to it, but the expanded wilderness is in the light green, going to the the east, northeast, and southeast of what is the Dean Wilderness, which is the land that's inside the heavy green border. And if you go to the next slide, those are mountain biking trails that we're talking about that we want to make sure they stay open. And they include the Brown County B Trail, the Depot Ridge Trail, actually two parts of it, the northern and southern part The Coles Road Trail, the Hickory Ridge Trail 18, Trail 19, and Hickory Ridge Trail 20, and I may have that number wrong because I've got two maps listed as a different number on each map. The picture was provided by Steve Surrett, who's been one of our strong supporters for the legislation on mountain biking himself. And our aim here, we don't see mountain biking as as detracting from the wilderness experience. I think it's unfortunate that that very strong constituency has basically been put at loggerheads with wilderness preservation advocates because the Wilderness Act and the interpretation of it doesn't allow for mountain biking in wilderness areas. So we're drawing this legislation with these corridors to explicitly avoid that conflict and also Wherever there's a utility easement or a county road next to the wilderness, there's a 100-foot setback into the wilderness that's actually non-wilderness that allows the county or the utility to do any kind of construction or maintenance it needs to do on the road or on the line in the easement. In the case of the Smith, the telephone company is about 200 foot wide because it goes 100 feet in both directions from the fiber optic line. Next slide. There are a lot of uncommon rare and endangered species in the area we're talking about. Some of these don't exist anywhere else in the state. I didn't put the timber rattlesnake in there because I just didn't think I would influence any minds positively with it. But actually, its stronghold in the entire state is the Brown County Hills, particularly the southern portion of it. right there, where we're talking. And the timber rattlesnake only existed in really wild, deep, large blocks of forest. So it's sort of a symbol of what we're talking about here. Some of these other creatures that I put up there in that menagerie were the Indiana bats in the upper left corner. Indiana Forest Alliance has hired scientists to do maternity roost surveys and found at least three of them in the forest in the expanded wilderness area going to the south of the, excuse me, four of them going to the south of the current wilderness and into what's called the Houston South Project further south. We also, if you jump over to the right and see the other bat, that's a northern long-eared bat. In 2019, we found three. northern long-eared bats, they're far more in trouble than the Indiana bat. In fact, many biologists say that they believe that they're instinct across their core range, that they're only existing where the winter hibernacula doesn't require them to go into caves because of white-nose syndrome. But we actually found a A wireless syndrome is a disease that started wiping out bats that came from Europe. We think that cavers brought it into caves and it wakes them up in the middle of winter, causes them to itch. It's a fungus and they start flying around and then they starve to death because they don't have their insect populations in there. Super high metabolism. these caves all over the eastern U.S. now littered with bat moments, where there used to be tens of thousands of these bats. The northern long-eared bat is almost extinct, but what I'm trying to say is the last attorney goose that we know of that was found for the animal in the state of Indiana is right in the middle of this expanded wilderness at Nebo Ridge. one bat that was found in the winter hibernacula count. It was found in Patton Cave in the Dean Wilderness in the last winter hibernacula count. The area is special for rare and endangered animals that are in trouble. The cerulean warbler in the lower left is the most seriously declining forest songbird in the United States. Its numbers have dropped by more than 70% since the 1960s. In the expanded wilderness area along the Fleetwood Branch, the Combs Branch, and the Lincoln Back Branch, there are populations nesting territories up as high as 23 per square mile. The only area they nest in the state successfully is in the deep forest of the Brown County Hills, and they're concentrated in the southern Brown County Hills inside the proposed expanded wilderness area. Of course, the bobcat you see there, We have dens of them near, in the area we've been inventorying, Indian Forest Alliance, and they've been tracked across the area with wildlife cameras. And the two birds going to the right of that, the hooded warwood and the worm-eating warwood, both species of special concern. Again, nests successfully only in the deep forest of south central Indiana. You can add the Crawford uplands to where they also can nest. They just aren't found if you go out to Owen County or Jennings County in the woodlots there. They're not large enough. They're only left here. And there's about 12 other birds in the same position. And they're abundant in the Nebo Ridge Forest. And then that cute little animal on the fingertip there in the far right corner is a pygmy shrew, which competes with the bumblebee bat for the title of smallest mammal on the earth. And it lives along the big logs, the giant logs that are in the Dean and the Nebo Ridge area and in Harrison Crawford and in Morgan Monroe State Forest and some of the other state forests in the deepest backcountry areas, runs along the logs and eats insects. It and its cousin, the pygmy shrew, the smoky shrew, also our species of special concern, found only there, nowhere else, not in any younger managed forest, never been found. and they were only discovered in the state in the 1980s. So they weren't even known to be here until then. So these are just examples. There's many other species. I haven't touched on the salamanders or the reptiles, vertebrates. Next slide please. It also has a very high quality plant community. That's a fern bed over in the far left, tulip poplar coming up and there's a squirrel corn in the middle, which is a pretty common ephemeral, but it just coats a lot of the forest slopes in the expanded wilderness area. And then there are old-growth stands of oaks, beeches, tulip poplars, hickories, black gums, and others that have been cored. And we have, I use dendrochronologists, and for example, chestnut oaks on the south or the far east slopes off Browning Mountain that are 300 and 14, well that was 10 years ago, 324 years old is how old they are. There are massive trees, trees of all different sizes and species composition is quite high across this area. It is a vast, undisturbed forest that is unique in Indiana. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the state or in Ohio or in Illinois that's this large. It stretches from Brown County State Park across to the National Forest, then over to the Dean and all the way to 446, about 45,000 acres. And this would protect the unprotected part of it that's between the state park and the Dean wilderness, the current Dean wilderness. Next slide, please. So beyond what critters and plants it protects and assures the survival of What this really does is it establishes the largest protected island of wild nature in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, providing unmatched wilderness recreation opportunities at Nashville's doorstep. Now, you've got Brown County State Park here in the state forest, and people in Indiana love to come to Brown County for the fall foliage, but relatively few people really know about the deep. Outside the state, almost no one knows about it. We just completed a study that I put on your table there from Earth Economics. Indiana Forest Alliance paid for it. They're economists who study the value of ecosystem services from forests and other natural habitats and quantify them. In terms of controlling flood waters because they absorb so much rain, protecting a drinking water supply that's the sole source drinking water supply for 140,000 people and myriad businesses in South Central Indiana, providing relief from heat, enhancing property values, and promoting a recreation industry. If we did nothing, if we didn't promote this area at all for its recreation value and try to bring more people to it, right now These economists calculated that the area is producing $235 million a year, surrounding South Central Indiana economy in these various benefits. And then over 30 years, that adds up to $5.4 billion. Now imagine what it could produce if we promoted this area as the largest protected area of wild nature in the lower Midwest, the industrial heartland of this country, where such lands are so rare. You can drive for hours across central Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois, and have a hard time just finding a forest that it doesn't take two or three seconds to pass in your automobile. This forest goes on for many miles, so it's quite unique. And it should be preserved for the greatest purpose, in our view, that it serves to mankind, humankind. Next slide. All right. We have also asked you to vacate the southern end of Combs Road between the Brown County Gate and the gate at the Jackson County line. It's been closed for more than 20 years. There was a proposal a few years ago to let some private groups work with the county to rehab the road and reopen it. We're telling you or I'm telling you that that's just not possible. The slide on the left there is a shelf, a double shelf waterfall where the roadbed used to be on the south side of Nebo Ridge as the trail comes down the hill. And here's my day pack in that So this is almost four feet up to here and a few more feet up to here. You can't drive a truck or a car over this without bottoming out on the bedrock. You would have to do a lot of excavating. Here's a picture of the fault more just broadly. Here's a picture of the bedrock that the road is now on where there is an area that's not a stream running on it. There's no gravel left and what's here is just siltstone bedrock. And then here's more typically what happens after it rained. Most of the road bed is a stream. Okay, here's the trail going this way, but the road where it crosses it often will go along for hundreds of yards. It's just the stream. So you would have to spend millions and millions of dollars to ever upgrade that road to a usable condition. And what would you do that for? The road, the map over on the right there, is showing the boundaries. I drew this with a felt pen last night, so sorry for the sloppiness. I don't write well on the southpaw here. But here's the road we're talking about that we would be fixing up. And the concern is access to Jackson County. We don't want to cut that off. But what you've got here, here's 135 coming down the story. Then it goes to the right and heads southeast. barely a mile down the road, maybe closer to two miles, a mile to two miles, you'd encounter Mount Nebo Road. Well, that's gravel and some stretches of pavement, but it goes down here and then tees into Berry Ridge Road. And you can take that road around across the Jackson County line down to Houston. Or you can turn right and take Mount Nebo Road over to the Houston Road, which goes to Houston. Or you can turn right halfway down and take another road that's entirely maintained in down to a point on Houston, or closer to Houston. But the point is, Seymour is over here off the map. Brownstown is down here. Those are where the law enforcement, hospitals, doctor's offices, things that you need access to Jackson County for are located. They're not over here. If you spent all that money for this road, you would be building a road to an unpopulated area of wilderness in the northwest corner of Jackson County. Why would you do that to provide access? That makes no sense. There's also 1,000 north, so everybody who lives here can take this, and that's paved all the way across here to quickly get over here if they want to go here, or to go south down to Kurtz or Norman. There's no reason to want to have access to this place. This is a wilderness that has returned, and most people have sold out to the government a long time ago there. the two farmers that are there, both, right, Denny, I forget his last name, Leroy Hayes, right here, they farm down here and routinely use this road to go to Houston and out to wherever they're going with their hay or other produce. So, I just, I don't see any reason to do that, and I think that this road poses a liability as a road, even if it's closed, it's still in the county books, and We don't want this proposal to reopen it to come back. Because if you did that, you would destroy the wilderness character of the heart of the area we're trying to save that is so unique. And so we would like to put the issue to bed for good and have you vacate the road.

Now, there's a certain problem with that that the Forest Service informed me of yesterday.

And that is that the trail that's currently on that road that I hike regularly and my neighbors all hike.

It is not a trail, according to Forest Service.

That is only a pathway that people use that the county is allowing them to use, whether it's mountain biking or horseback riding. They have put up signs saying no off-road vehicles there. And they've got gates and boulders to try to control that. But it doesn't exist as an official trail. according to the Forest Service. So if the road were vacated, the land was turned over to the Forest Service, you'd have the Forest Service potentially saying, we don't want any more mountain biking or horseback riding on that trail or on that path. They wouldn't stop the hiking, because you can hike anywhere in the National Forest. That's OK. But long distance cross country horseback riding and mountain biking aren't allowed unless they're on official Forest Service trails. in the National Forest. So what I was hoping you'll do is vacate this road, condition upon the Forest Service establishing that multi-use trail on the Combs, on the vacated alignment of the Combs Road. We don't want the mountain biking with horseback riding to be stopped on that road. And it's a popular use, it's not attracting at all from the wilderness condition of the forest, and it's what we think this should be for. People should be able to enjoy this area. Again, if you'll go to the last slide, that's what we're asking. We're asking the county commission to ask U.S. Representative Howchin to reintroduce the Benjamin Harrison National Recreation Area in the Wilderness Establishment Act and expeditiously seek its passage by the U.S. House of Representatives. She already did this in 2024. It was H.R. 8535. We're just trying to get her to reintroduce the bill. The second point, to ask U.S. Senators Young and Banks to reintroduce this legislation and expeditiously seek his passage by the U.S. Senate. The third point is to vacate the closed Combs Road from his gate east of Elkinsville to the Jackson County line, conditioned upon the establishment by the U.S. Forest Service of a hiking mountain biking, horseback riding trail on the alignment of the vacated road. And the last point is to ask the Forest Service to establish this multi-use trail as soon as possible. Now, I'm not telling you they're going to do that, much less do it right away. They were telling me that we are starved for funds right now. We're having a hard time just doing what we're charged to do, we would have to have the resources to manage the trail if we were going to do that. So we'll have to start a big effort to do that before the road vacations would happen, but we don't have, we're kind of in the corner here. We can't push the vacation that we want you to adopt until we're assured that that area can still be used by not only hikers but mountain bikers and horse trail riders. So I hope I've been clear on this and welcome any questions.

So I have a couple. So you said that there was an initial member in Manhattan that had a conversation saying that there would be no private lands impacted by this activity that's currently held involved within whatever the current residents are that I know there are parcels on property owners that fall, that fall within this area. Yeah. So, do you know how many people, how many parcels or how many that is? Is it a dozen, two dozen? Off the top of my head.

Well, if you're talking about the Benjamin Harrison National Recreation Area, I'm talking just about in the general area of Combs Road of that nature. There's three, there's three property owners at the southern end. that are, two are in Brown County and they're here today. One is in Jackson County, her line, her property goes up to, just like ours, up to the Brown County line. My wife and I own land on the south side of that, in Jackson County, but you have Jim Killen here and Susie Hover, who have the property. They have land that is in Brown County, on Combs Road, that would be affected by this and the key here is that the Forest Service would have to have a permit with them. I don't think it's a permit but a written authorization that they would continue to allow them access to their property but I don't think the Forest Service is going to block that. They don't normally do that. They try to maintain access to private property and I think they've had an agreement with the Hubbard's for a long time to do that so I don't anticipate a problem there.

And again, I know when we went through this exercise of talking about going back and not vacating, but closing, and the conversation led to, at some point, there was a permanently closed Combs Road. I know there's one bridge that crosses Salt Creek in the Elkinsville area, and that bridge, obviously, right now is being funded and looking at being replaced. But if I'm not mistaken, that particular bridge is the only way in the access certain areas that what you're talking about, correct?

Well, yeah, but that's north of what we're talking about closing. Yeah, that's down there, that's close to where the road goes off to Blue Creek, and yeah, that you're going to spend money on, and a lot of people use that bridge to get to the Nebo Ridge Trailhead, so.

Okay, and then there are, again, if I'm not mistaken, and again, I don't want to counterpart you or nothing, I think there's somewhere between six to ten property owners that are private property owners on that side, so if that bridge were to fail, which again, I'm going to point to severe weather events that impact us in North Carolina and Tennessee. And as you know, Brown County is the beginning of all things when it comes to that, not the end of all things. So my concern, and I always have a concern, is that bridge, while it's in the shape that it is and going to be replaced, from what I can see, is the only means by which to access that ground except through Combs Road.

But that wouldn't be affected by what we're proposing. you would still have the road going to that bridge and passing it all as an open maintained county road. We're not wanting to close that bridge or the road. No, I'm asking about the access that that bridge fails.

Yeah, that would be a problem. Those people that are sitting on the other side of that, the southern side of that creek bed, find their way out of the wilderness.

Well, what would happen now is they would If the bridge failed and there was no way to use it for a long time, and the creek was going to flood it for a long time, right now, they would be able to either walk up Combs Road, over the hill, and down the other side on the trail that's there. And this would not change that either. This would just say that trail is going to be maintained as a trail. And so right now, they're in the position you're talking about, where if that bridge fails, they're going to have a problem. But again, I don't think that's a reason not to close this road, because I think that you couldn't make this road passable by vehicles without a major project that's a lot bigger than the Pumpkin Ridge thing. I mean, it would be a lot of construction.

It's about a mile and a half, if I recall, from Jackson County to the location where Cone Road does exist today, if I remember.

There's a, between the gates, I think it's around two miles, two to three miles, something like that, between the two gates, yeah.

But that was my question, that's my concern. is the accessibility in the emergency. But again, the events that we've had have been 100 years and 500 year activities. So who's to say that that ever happens? When is the bridge scheduled to be rebuilt? So the bridge in and of itself is actually on schedule to look at starting construction in 2029, 2030. Yes, exactly. Crossing our fingers.

Okay. Ron? I have a question. It might make me look kind of silly. Is all the property that you're proposing, right down there in the Dean Wilderness, I know it's called, and you've already said it, I believe, but I just wanted to make sure. Is all that property you're talking about, the Fort Benjamin Harris type, is that all down there or is there another section somewhere else?

No, it's all there. Okay. Benjamin Harrison National Recreation Area is not at all related to Fort Benjamin Harrison, which is, of course, Indianapolis. It's a state park. It's all in what we call the Pleasantland Purchase Unit of the Hoosier National Forest. And it's about 30,000 acres. Well, the National Recreation Area that we're proposing is about 30,000 acres. Expanded wilderness would be 28,000 acres, if you just round it to the closest 1,000 acres.

One more question. I remember a few years back, there were several thousand acres down in that area that had been scheduled for burn, clear cut. Has that ever happened? Or is that part of what we're talking about here?

There's a large project south of 1000 north. That county road I pointed to that goes straight, if you can put the map back on there, I can point that to you. No, you're on. But that covers about 13,000 acres of national forest ground. That is in some of the expanded wilderness and it's all inside, either the expanded wilderness or the proposed national recreation area. They haven't proceeded with that. We've been in court over that twice now, and we're still waiting to decide whether that's going to go forward. We're still working with the court as it's the force that's on the remedy that the judge has to work. That's all I got. It's that purple land, and mostly in that purple land to the southeast is the House of South Park.

So let me clarify and make sure I understand. That currently resides as a national portion. Yes. And so, and again, I'm not knowledgeable in the difference between the, with regards to how land is treated. I assume when you say wilderness, that's like almost working towards no presence of man or any impact from kind of development or additive facilities and things of that nature to encourage recreation. It is trying to leave it in its native state.

Well, they maintain trails. They rebuild trails. build trails at wilderness areas. They have campsites, they have trailheads at the end of the trail, down in the wilderness. But yeah, generally, the presence of human art is temporary. Generally, most trips to wilderness areas, enforcers, regulars, can't be more than two weeks.

And I assume that's something that like backpackers are typically in that area. Right, right.

And I want to point out that the Nebo area, and Bad Holler, and Panther Creek, all this land right here is called prescription area 6.2 in the National Forest Management Plan. So the Forest Service to its credit, has been managing this off the timber, but it's not part of the Hoosier National Forest area where they log. They have seen the value of the deep forest there, and it's off limits to that. They're trying to let nature take its course. This is 6.4 area here where they also don't log, but they allow for management around the perimeter. and maintenance of wildlife ponds, and this is 2.4 area. Also, it's designed to be along reservoirs and riparian areas where they're not doing commercial logging to any extent because they're trying to be conservative about protecting the riparian values. So all this land that's in the proposed expanded wilderness is not in the timber base of the Hoosier National Forest. At least all the 6.2 area, all the 6.4 area, and I don't think the 2.4 area is either. But I just saw Mike Chavez here. He couldn't answer that question. Correct me if I'm wrong on that.

Yeah, good afternoon. My name is Mike Chavez. I'm the Forest Supervisor at the Michigan National Forest.

I was intending to be at this meeting, actually, as just part of a rotation I do.

We have land in nine different counties that we manage. And I try to show up on some of our county commissioner meetings just to make sure you all know who I am and how to get in touch with me. And we learned this morning that this topic of wilderness expansion was going to be on the agenda. So I'm not prepared with any grand statements or description of what this will be. I guess Mr. Stant called me I spoke with him on the phone three times yesterday and he never mentioned that he was coming to give this talk. He had some questions about vacating Combs Road, which I answered and we can talk about that if you have questions about what that would mean in terms of his proposal. As far as the wilderness goes, I guess all I would say is what's being proposed here is a pretty fundamental change to the use and access of tens of thousands of public of acres, tens of thousands of acres of public land. It seems like that should elicit at least some public information about what it would mean, what the trade-offs would be. It's complicated. The Wilderness Act is not always the most straightforward in terms of what we can and can't do and what the public can and can't do. So it's complex in terms of what kind of impacts that would have. As Mr. Spann pointed out, that area that's in the proposed, his proposed expansion of the wilderness It's not an area we currently look at as part of our suitable timber base, so we're not looking at commercial timber sales within that. Our management plan indicates as such. What it does allow for us to do though is to respond. If we have large storm events that come in and cause a big impact, if we have a new invasive species, a new insect, a new pest of some sort that comes in and is causing serious damage or death to tree species or other vegetation, we can come in and respond to that. At a minimum, the Wilderness Act would make that a lot more difficult, if not impossible, to do within this area. The Wilderness Act specifically prohibits use of motorized and mechanized equipment. So that's not just on the public, that's on us as well. So when we clear trails in the existing wilderness area, we cannot use chainsaws. As you can imagine, that slows things down quite a bit. We have to hike and cruise. They do use crosscut saws. I just went out and did this with some of my crews a couple weeks ago just to remind myself that I'm 20-something anymore. It takes some effort and it takes some time. So those would be significant changes that would happen. So can I ask a question on that?

So if this moved into the wilderness area, is your agency still have oversight of that?

We would, yeah. I mean, unless Congress decides otherwise. But yes, we would. It's all currently National Forest System land. So we would still manage it, but under those restrictions of the Wilderness Act. Another thing to point out is this. I've never seen a wilderness area that's this much spaghetti strapped. He's correct, Mr. Chan is correct. There are examples of areas where you have corridors of non-wilderness area, roads usually, that have some specific use, often by local government or something like that. But it's usually a single road over tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of acres. It's nothing like this. There's private land scattered throughout this. He's proposing those not be included in wilderness, which they couldn't be anyway because it's private land, not federal. Excluding the roads and then excluding the mountain biking trails as well because mountain bikes are specifically prohibited in wilderness. So this would technically make them not wilderness within those corridors. I suppose that's fine for a specific time or a specific interest. However, some of those trails are fairly new. Over time, what we find are unexpected impacts of trails, right? You lay out a trail as best you can, erosion happens, we have a need to reroute something, a storm happens, takes down some vegetation or recontours the hill in some fashion, we have to move the trail. Once it's locked in law, we cannot do that. So our only options will be to close and eliminate that trail or make it a hike only or leave it as some kind of bad erosion outcome, I guess, that you could consider doing. So it puts a lot of limits on there. It really fundamentally changes not only how we manage, but how the public, again, how they use and access it, all the public. So I'll just point that out. On the Combs Road, this is news to me, what Mr. Stan was proposing, that you vacate it, but only if we agree to keep it as a trail. Whether you vacate or not is, of course, up to you. That's the county's jurisdiction. If you did so, I can't stand here right now and tell you that we will make it a trail. Mr. Spann told me yesterday that it was about a three-mile stretch. I haven't verified that, so I'm not sure. Three miles of new trail maintenance takes some work. Again, it takes people, it takes money. As storms come in and knock trees down, the road in its current condition is pretty rough. It does not meet any standards for what we would have as any kind of trail hiking, biking, mountain biking. So we take a lot of work. And before I can decide to designate something as a trail, or do a timber sale, or do a prescribed fire, or anything else, we have to do an environmental analysis, which takes time. It takes review by various specialists, hydrologists, archaeologists, et cetera, wildlife biologists. It takes public input, all that kind of stuff. So I can't say we would or wouldn't do it. We have to consider it in terms of our capacity, both in terms of people and money, and also what impacts it would have on both the users and the natural resources.

So your agency at this point in time, I assume you're not managing, are you managing this in cooperation with the Department of Natural Resources with the state of Indiana as part of that, or is it truly falling on the U.S. Forest Service?

It's U.S. Forest Service, yeah, so we're the responsible agency for all the land that's in this proposal, but again, it's a mishmash. There's some of that brownish land that's for engineers that manages that, all the way to private land. We have no jurisdiction over any of that. We cooperate with the DNR and we have some partnerships on some activities, but the use of authority and management is on us.

I did tell you I was coming to the Brown County Commission that I was having a discussion. I was very clear about that. And you've done this to me probably a half dozen times now. You come to meetings and you deliberately lie about what I've done or not and use your position as a federal bureaucrat You asked me questions about Combs Road and told me you were advocating for it to be vacated.

You never mentioned anything about presenting a wilderness expansion proposal and asking for this. And you don't have to.

I'm just saying I wasn't here to talk about that. We asked National Town Council that two years ago. It's none of your business whether the Indiana Forest Alliance decides to present a proposal to the Brown County Commission. I never insinuated that I would.

The Indiana Forest Alliance has every right to advocate for whatever they feel like advocating. They have every right, as do any other member of the public.

They have the legal right on the Wilderness Act also to use mechanized equipment to treat insect infestations and fires. And I will bring you the regulations. And there are wilderness areas all over the country that are more spaghetti strapped than this.

As I said, I wasn't aware of this topic until this morning. I'm not here to debate it. I would just propose that this is public land that belongs to all of the public. And that the public should be informed if there's going to be a change. All right.

Well, that's why I have a meeting. So I appreciate you being here. Appreciate you sharing.

And always glad to chat more. Please reach out if you have any questions. OK. Will do.

Thank you. My name is Jim Killen. I am a property owner on Combs Road beyond the blockage. I thoroughly endorse what Mr. Stantz has proposed. but I'm really gonna take a different tack on this. I have owned that land for 50 years. 20 years ago, it was closed.

20 years ago, I was burglarized seven times because the thief had egress through both ways.

One of those times, Diane, you might remember, involves some gunplay.

There have been methamphetamine labs found back there.

This is a hub of illegal activity, poaching, I have called DNR many times because, Sarah, as you probably well know, you hear shots in the night, and these are not target practice, you know, we know when somebody's hunting deer. This is nothing but a wanton destruction of wilderness if you were not to vacate that road. When I was robbed seven times prior to the closure, I notified law enforcement in both counties. I never received any response whatsoever.

I am not faulting the Brown County Sheriff's Department because you don't have the capacity to police that area.

You don't have the capacity to police it. And furthermore, when it suggested that it would take millions of dollars to go over that hill, absolutely right. This is a haven for off-road vehicles, and they seem to want to do their destruction at night. So, this has just been a nightmare for my children. You may remember that my son was here, testifying last time. To wake up in the night to gunshots, the roar of trucks tearing through that area, it's just unacceptable. So, vacate the area, I endorse the wilderness proposal, and I hope that you have the wisdom to pursue that.

This is a very serious matter for me.

To my understanding, the Holdens, Diane and Susie, and myself are just about the only property owners in that area. We pay Brown County taxes, and we're asking you to vacate the road. That's all I have to say. If you have any questions, please.

Nothing right now, sir.

Let me just summarize a couple things. I think Ron and I are both here on Columbus Road. That was Father William Ward and Peter. When they, he's talking about opening it? Okay. And then we had that whole issue popped up, so. Yeah, more familiar, I've got, I was here, I taped it. Had all the information to present on that, so we're aware of it. In January, I think it was probably 25, Kevin and I first took office and then, you know, Ron, Ron's in his final two years, and so the first thing we did was, was,

update the closure of that road after combs road i think it's opposed a five-year thing kevin if i remember three i thought three was that it something like that it was it was a five-year closure so again the whole history of that was there was an ordinance put in place that was never revisited by the commissioners on a five-year basis to keep that road closed so the whole thing is it is on our calendar and one of the things that's being considered is just permanently closing that road but i'm not even there so that's afforded to us as commissioners if we choose to do so within the next within 2027 from according to what we've had put in place i understand your concerns my interest was never opening the road um but again once the county seeds authority we have no way to recover the authority so that is that is a concern And again, like I said, my concern and just being aware, I wasn't even aware that that bridge that we are fixing that has been standing there, a mix of concrete and wood bridge, and has been identified as one of our critical bridges, that's why it's being worked on, was in essence one of the only key ways to get across Salt Creek at that point. without any other identified access points because there's not a lot of the bridges that go in that territory it is a very rugged area I know that because I've gone through and walked the area and I've actually seen some of Combs Road and then actually what now is being used by you know bikes and things of that nature so I mean it would be definitely challenging even using the off-road vehicle in the form of a side-by-side to access certain areas

I get it, but I always like to want to make sure that I'm informed. And then to go to actually abandon that road, that's a different set of hoops. I know we looked at that first. It's just not that simple. And now in the Forest Service, they have their requirements for what restrictions we may put on that adds to the overhead, but nothing that we can't look at or assess and again continue to keep that road closed. Yeah, we know after the Pumpkin Ridge Road what the cost is. And I guess Pocono Ridge Road looks like the inner city compared to this one, right? As bad as that was. Again, that's something that's on our list. And Jeff, I appreciate the information you sent. I shared that with fellow commissioners and I shared it with our attorney. To me, it's interesting on the history of it. When you involved, I think the Mike had mentioned, you involved these different organizations, Corps of Engineers and DNR and the Forest Service. Good luck. I mean, when I read the history of this, well, it was 50 years and all the different interests playing and for somebody to have the perseverance to fight through that for all those years and make all those accommodations is pretty incredible from a government standpoint. People don't realize when you make a change like that, what all is involved and the different agencies involved and the different interests, especially when it came to landowners, would be a biggie. And I'm glad you also addressed the mountain bike thing. That was the first thing out of my mouth. As soon as we did that, I'd be hearing from the mountain bikers. So I'm glad you kind of headed that off in the past. And I'm kind of curious, and we'll get to that point when it comes to what conditions we need to turn over the road and keep it as a road. But those guys have been maintaining those mountain bike trails. And a pretty robust kind of group of folks to maintain those trails when it comes to mountain bikers. And, you know, I've hiked that, hiked it. I think Mount Nebo Ridge Trail is the first one our family hiked. My son's back there a lot. I've hiked it, so I'm familiar with the area, beautiful area. Again, a member of the Columbus Road Debate, the 25 years, all the horror stories, it was, ew, no thank you. And I've had friends that did their, that helped tear up those roads and had a ball on the weekends when they were allowed to do that. So, more than familiar with the history of that, and I don't think any of us would have the intent of ever reopening that door will we ever have the money to do it if you ever wanted to do it to have a back door out of out of out of there in jackson county so yeah before we get too far i know we have other business to do but a lot of people showed up for this and i don't know that everybody's got a chance to speak okay i'll offer that let me close off um where we'll end up this is we'll um our attorney's on the line and so i sent her uh the examples you have for the letters of support and the resolution, I think, the Brown County, or the Brown County, Monroe County Council did. So they're looking at that and about that resolution slash letter of support, you know, whatever you do. So they're aware of that. Just more aware of the Combs Road thing. That's nothing we're going to do in the immediate future anyway. So on the way this works, we generally introduce a topic like this at our admin meeting at 2 o'clock, and then we vote on moving forward at evening session, which will be at July 15th. So that's kind of where we're at on that one. And also, I gave the Democrat, Jeff, when you gave me heads up, I gave the Democrat the information, and they had it in the paper. I think I sent you a copy of the article on that one. So I gave the awareness out there to the public. We have this meeting, and we have the third, have the second meeting, and makes more people aware to give their feedback on that. So that's what I had. If anybody wants to comment from the audience, I appreciate you being here. If there's anything you want to say, we'll give you the podium. Just step up and introduce yourself.

good afternoon commissioners my name is Tim Maloney I'm a resident of Brown County for about 40 years and I'd like to just rise in support of both the proposal for support of the Benjamin Harrison wilderness area and recreation area and also in support of vacating Combs Road conditionally as was proposed I was here for both the the Commissioner's discussions on originally reopening Combs Road and then when you came back months later and voted to keep the road closed. So it has certainly supported your second effort to keep it closed. But I think you should take a hard look at vacating the road and hopefully in conjunction with the Forest Service keeping open the multi-use trail and recreational access. But I think you find that This proposal for a wilderness and recreation area would be very beneficial to the people of Brown County, of southern Indiana, and to the economy in this area. Outdoor recreation is big business now in the United States. In Indiana, the estimate is that outdoor recreation generates nearly $16 billion a year in economic activity. finding from the U.S. Department of Commerce in their periodic review of outdoor recreation's economic impact. So certainly hope that you will seriously consider this and move forward on it. Okay, thanks. Thank you.

Thank you commissioners for having us today. I'm Suzie Hover. My mother is Diane Holden back here. We are the property owners on the south end of Jackson County line that go through the gate to get to our property. We, personally, my husband and I, have maintained the road. If we get into trouble where it's something where we can't get through a creek because it's washed out because of one of the big events we have, the Forest Service has come and helped us out. But other than that, we don't ask anything of the county. When we had a break-in a while ago, Jackson County and the DNR came and handled it. So we are very much in favor of abandoning de-emissioning the road. We're fine with it. Having that gate there has stopped The theft, it stopped the off-road use that ruined the road in the first place. The mountain bikers we are fine with. They are a much different crew than the four-wheeling, drinking, middle-of-the-night gun-shooting people that have been back there having fun. So we are in favor of abandoning the road. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm not a Brown County voter. I live a couple miles over the county line. But I am a tourist that comes to Brown County mostly because I have access to large tracts of wilderness and wild life lands, state park, and big parks and bird watching. That's why I come to Nashville and usually stay for dinner.

So I think tourism is a real thing. And I support everything Jeff proposed.

I'm Dave Seastrom, a longtime county resident and also a strong advocate for everything that Mr. Sanchez proposed, including the Katie Combs Road. But, you know, in Brown County, tourism is everything. I mean, we've got real estate, we've got tourism.

And this is a powerful and wonderful expansion that will make a huge difference to our local economy and draw a lot of people into this area. And I see it as a big win for all of us. That's all I have to say. Anyone else? Let me just wrap up on a note on the economics.

Before you do that, I do have a question for Stephanie online. You there? Yes. So your predecessor when we've had countless conversations because for some strange reason everybody wants to either have the county take over an unmaintained road or bring up the snuff on the unmaintained road or vacate an unmaintained road. I think in the conversations and trying to educate myself and all that and which again I would have to like to have confirmation is it isn't solely the responsibility of the commissioners if i'm not mistaken when we're dealing with i don't know when i maybe the difference is that it's not our property it's a right-of-way so i don't know if that makes a difference but as my understanding the council also has to be involved in this or that is my question is there is there a need or necessary is that entities necessary if the commissioners were to consider vacating that road

I'd have to take a look at it, but it looked like what it had done before, under the state code, the county executive that can temporarily close for the five years, and it looked like you passed that, you may have passed that resolution last year, so at this point it's still closed. If you're looking to vacate that, there are

various steps that have to go into it and I'd have to look at that closer to figure out what you've already done and what you you know desire to do going forward okay that's the question that I have because again I know okay I know you know and most of the counties in this data from all the counties in the state they don't necessarily have prescribed ownership by a deed it's typically by you know right of use kind of activity so I don't know if that's applicable with regards to how that falls into the identifying of real property because I know that's a requirement on the part of real property but like I said this seems to be like we need to kind of have an understanding of that yeah what I was looking at was sort of what you've done for the temporary vacation and I'd have to look a bit more into the permanent vacation of it okay and final question for you Please confirm that if we chose to permanently close that, that it is a two-year timeline, that in January or whenever we sign the original ordinance, that 24 months from that date we would be able to permanently close that road without having to process or take continual action?

Yeah, I think I'd have to, again, check on the permanent vacation part. What I remember from the temporary vacation was it was five years for the first time, and I think you could extend it for two years, but I'll take a look at that for the time period for a permanent vacation.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Stephanie. You never cut a drive. Folks on the economics, more than familiar with the economic impacts of tourism. I think over half our land is either state, national forests, or people put their land in a classified forest. Probably over half, 86%. Depends who you talk to, but quite a bit. And we think, well, that reduces the amount of property tax we would collect, but yet it's that terrain that tracks people down here. And Ball State did the economic study for Brown County Number one, their number one suggestion was to attract more residents to live down here that are attracted by this terrain. Number two is recreation. And so we've seen a surge in the recreation tourism. And so when you look at the numbers, when it comes to the income tax base, tourism brings in, last study I saw, maybe $21 million in gross wages of the adjusted gross income of all Browning residents, over $500 million. So tourism is kind of an engine for Nashville, but for the county, It's the terrain that attracts people to live here. And I think the Democrat just published information on housing prices on sales. We're like number three on meeting home values in the state of Indiana because you have less land, you have high demand, and prices go up. And so I think it's around $400,000, whatever the median on those sales prices. But we're like number three in the state for that one. So again, that attracts more people down here. That's what helps fund us. So again, that's it. That's our economic basis. So you want to maintain that or grow as much as you can. Again, attracting people to live here, to stay here, and then recreation. So thank you. Yeah, I appreciate everybody's support. Appreciate you being here. Again, it'll be on our agenda for our next meeting. So thank you. It's 6 o'clock. 6 o'clock on the 15th, I believe. on the bottom of the agenda. And Pupkin Ridge Road is the 16th, so that'll be interesting. Thank you very much. Thank you guys. Thanks everyone.

Move that along, guys. All right, I know. Just look at it online. All right.

agenda.

Next item is a memorandum of agreement between the Area Planning Commission and the Commissioner. Your background, I think I sent this out a couple weeks ago. This is a continuation of the two joint meetings we had with the Area Planning Commission. I don't know if you remember the key points is the APC developed a, drafted a comprehensive plan and presented that to us in July of 2025. Hey guys, if you could mind leaving the room. Ladies and gentlemen, if you could back to the mic. And so our concern that there wasn't enough public engagement from the community on this one. And so again, from the RDC, we looked at is there grant money available from OCRA? There's $60,000 out there. Our low to moderate income level is too high, so that didn't work. And then we applied, looked for a rule empowerment development grant from OCRA to develop a capability where we go out and solicit input, Friday input, regarding the plan and that one we didn't get because we didn't have the community engagement we were asking them to support for. And so that led to the meetings we had, the two joint meetings we had with them and how best to go about making these changes. So it's up to the commissioners to provide suggestions for amending the plan. We could have done that independently and then gave it to the APC to consider. They could have done an update to the plan and sent it to us to consider. Instead of having two separate tracks, Stephan did a really good job of putting a memorandum of agreement together for us and said, hey, here's how you can do it jointly. So there's less risk of failure and higher degree of success on getting the kind of product that we'd be proud to vote on and support within the county. This would be the memorandum of agreement between the President, Board of Commissioners, and Carol Bowden, the President of the Area Commission. If you guys agree on going forward with this, I'll put that on the agenda for their next meeting, and I'll be there to discuss it. But as this thing rolls forward, I mean, you've heard the pitches. We've talked about this for several meetings. I'll be the liaison for us, and of course, I'll let you know, let you keep an eye on how it's going. One question.

Where's the money coming from?

Have you figured that out? We don't know yet. Yeah, well, I don't know. The issue becomes is the RFP. And so we're looking at least a minimum of one meeting for each of the four townships. And then we've got other scopes. So I don't know what the RFP, we'd have to do an RFP, we'd have to estimate the cost, and we'd have to find money. And I think if you look at $60,000 of overbudgets, The APC spent $10,000, and then the Community Foundation kicked in $27,000, so I don't know. I'm thinking we can find that money somewhere. We've done a pretty good job on our budget this year, and I think we're down, what, we cut over about a million, something like that, rearrange things. So I think, and we did that last year as well, so I think we can find the money right between the two of us and the importance of it, so that's where we're at right now.

So guys, any questions? I don't have any. My understanding and looking at that is simply it's just a framework to go through and move forward with cooperatively developing the comprehensive plan and moving it forward. And again, the things that can be addressed at a later time is once we understand what that plan is and what the action items and the approach is, we can look at requesting or going before the council to request additional funding to do that. I don't know if you saw me from that. Okay, agreed. All right, motion then? I'll make a motion that we move forward with a memorandum of agreement so we can put it under the calendar and move approved and then signing it on our side and putting it before the APC. Second. All right, roll.

Kevin, how do you vote? Yes. Ron, how do you vote?

Yes.

Tim, how do you vote?

Yes.

okay next one kevin civics plus contract so civics plus contract so at the point civics plus is um they provide the services and the and i don't want to be too descriptive of it i'll just mention that it's basically a platform that does our website um we have um the service or the contract ended there's an agreement if i'm not mistaken the summer renewing there was an arrangement to where we are now receiving their support and service that I don't remember, Eric, off the top of my head, it's like $5,400. Give me a second. So the initial reoccurring that we would initial turn for us signing up this year would be $5,502.05, and then have an annual reoccurring service with an uplift to $6,497.66, which is an increase. And both of those numbers fall below the actual dollars and what we were paying before we had this conversation and contract negotiation. So we are to the tune of less dollars and an understanding of what our obligations are. So I would like to make a motion to move forward with approving this contract so we can get it in Eric's hands and get it closed and signed and back to us. Is that your motion? Yes sir. Second.

Ron, how do you vote?

Yes.

Tim, how do you vote? Yes. Kevin, how do you vote?

Yes. Next item is revised job description for the emergency preparedness coordinator. Man, this has been reviewed, facilitated, changed, updated, modified, sent back and forth, and we finally ended up with a final product. You guys, I assume you haven't had a chance to read it.

Yeah, I had a chance to read it. My only comments when I went back were acknowledging and identifying areas where they haven't made a permanent decision as to reporting structure and minor one or two misspellings. As far as the content goes, I appreciate the work that was put into that. It looks like the health department actually did spend some time and take some guidance from Corey, who was the prior preparedness coordinator, so I'm appreciative of that because, you know, we've got I appreciate that moving forward. And it's also my understanding that they're willing to look at proceeding forward, but it's not going to move at a quick pace. I want to make sure that we get the right person hired and put in that position. So my recommendation or my motion would be to move forward with approving the emergency preparedness plan.

more of a statement here. And this person that comes in and they're all eager and wanting to hit the ground, I think it should be noted that they need to be in communication with Julia about any of these grants. Yes. And Julia has to know about the grants before they get out there running around and we can actually back up and supply our part of it. Right. That's all I got. Yep. This is great. Cory was very I second your motion. Okay, we'll call it.

Tim, how do you vote? Yes. Kevin, how do you vote? Yes. Ron, how do you vote? Yes.

Okay. Looking ahead at our next meeting, July 15th, we'll have a letter of support or a resolution, a draft for the Charleston-Willis area. We heard the presentation tonight, so we'll open it up to public comments again. Hang on just a second.

Sure. We're not going to do the service agreement?

No. No. You're not doing it? I can. We can amend it if you're comfortable with it. I mean, you and I had the conversation and we didn't identify it as a change to the agenda. Can we go back and reopen that and request a change to the agenda? Because we have a contract for Everpark. What is it? It's a contract for Everpark generator maintenance. And they have it to the agenda now? It's a, I don't even, what's protocol, Stephanie? To add an agenda item?

Add it in a little bit. Add it in.

You can add it.

Okay. All right. So my motion would be readopt and add and then basically make a motion to change the agenda and include the other part of the agreement. Okay.

Because this time of year, no confusion. No confusion. Yeah. I want the power to stay on.

Yeah, I do too.

All right. Okay. And that, in terms of the air park generator, what's the... You got any other things?

I mean, you mentioned the whole thing with regards to we've got to make sure that the air filters are changed.

There's a list of that, and he said you needed to talk with maintenance. I mean, air filters are pretty minor. Yeah. I mean, if maintenance had to, they could go put them on. It's just that since they've been maintaining it, it would probably be nice to have a record of what they have done. Because it's got, you know, annual oil changes and all that stuff in there. Right. I think it's pretty minor that we could overcome that. Right.

So, I would like to facilitate or make a motion that we move forward and approve the contract for EVA Park to take up the maintenance of our generators. To the total of seven. A second. Pardon?

Seven of them. Yeah, no. A second. Okay. Roll.

Kevin, how do you vote? Yes. Ron, how do you vote? Yes. Tim, how do you vote?

Yes. All right, back to the next section, the next July 15th meeting, again, we'll have that resolution letter support. That'll be on the agenda. We also have two kind of controversial issues we'll bring back up. And guys, what I'll do on both this Helmsburg and the Music Center, I mean, I've been involved in both of those, gosh, since I started here, started going to meetings in 2016. So I'll give you kind of a fact sheet. I've got a summary down to about two pages. and we can go over that if you want to go into the other 100 pages and support that, I'd be glad to do it. So anyway, we'll just provide the basic facts on both issues and something so when we tee it up, we'll at least come from the same common ground and be glad to fill up any holes we need to do and understand. So that's my to-do list. We'll get it to you next week. April 19th, yeah, that's the second one. And also we have the for July 15 school resource officer grant and then we've got access we've got another access policy we need to improve also right so I'll add that man I tell you that's why people joke when you get a federal grant they seem to have so much overhead associated with those grants okay that's a policy and Kim sent that 64 pages Yes, it's a procedural policy that we need to review. I've never seen anything as complicated as what they require.

Don't we already have one?

It's basically a federal one for procurement and it's related to Access Brown County. Yeah. For the school? There's two things. You mentioned basically school resource officers, talking about the actual contractor the agreement again and that's another question i have for stephanie um because again i haven't i i did finally get the document from the sheriff's office on what was put in place and i'll pass that along to you too but stephanie in the situation where we have an arrangement where we have a grant that is whether it be federal state or whatever and we the commissioners are going through the exercise and signing on behalf of the sheriff that is a government agency to a government agency so they've used a memorandum of understanding to identify what the the obligations are for both parties but shouldn't that be done with an interlocal agreement is that related to the ordinance that you sent me yesterday afternoon No, that one was the public agency and public agents. That was a different one. I haven't talked to you about this one, so surprise.

Okay. Um, yeah, I think I need to look at what the agreement says that you should be signing on behalf of it.

I will send you a copy of it and then you can give guidance if the document, the format that we're using and what we have is sufficient or if we need to go with a different document. That sounds good.

Thank you. Sorry for the abrupt notification. Yeah. And Ron, the challenge on this resource, on this grant, is we sign, we vote on the agreement to make sure the terms are in there. It's really up to the auditor and the council to identify and approve the grant and manage the grant. Correct. So we have a contract review when it comes to nuts and bolts on the grant getting reimbursed and funding and matching. That's our hands. Right. which has been a challenge on the screen here. Okay, all right. Moving right along. Software systems. These dudes, we put them on there so they wouldn't forget them. This American Legal Publishing, we're looking at their contract. What that is, is a proposal pretty much to put all our ordinances online and searchable. So they'll go through the keywords and load them in and lo and behold we'd be able to search something and find it versus doing the scavenger hunt.

And keep us updated yearly. Yeah. Any updates.

So, and it's kind of complicated when it comes to what we want for services when it comes to the money and then they ask also for follow up on legal support as to some of the references when it comes to code and that kind of thing. So it's a complicated So we're kind of looking at the end of that and figuring out, tailoring to what we need before we pull the trigger on the contract and make sure we got everything in place. But man, I'll tell you, it's the things we look for. I think Kevin just found one. What was it, Kevin? Was it a 1998 amendment?

That is correct. So there is an ordinance in place establishing public agency and public agents. That's never been revised, amended, yielded.

So basically there's like 15 people running it. that are authorized to sign contracts with the county. Accusations on behalf of the county. On behalf of the county, we would never know it. 1998. So those are the kinds of things that we need to identify and get off the shelf and let them see the light of day and make the changes we need to make. So it's on there. We'll get through it probably within the next month or so. Okay, Indian Hill was still working on that one. Now, county office department reports. Teresa? Kudos on the budget. She just got done. The suspense was due. All of our budgets did go down.

We did actuals again. Looked at the billing and spending. So all in all, you're down over a million dollars from what your request is.

Let's go to the million dollars. I'm sitting all the way over here and I don't know if I'm hearing correctly. You were able to cut the budget by a million dollars? Each year, last year and this year?

Last year they added back 700, well they added back to it they gave us money we didn't ask for it right so yeah we identified a health fund yeah we identified a million and a half half a half within that health fund and not have it in the health fund i will say that and currently the health fund is very healthy it's but it doesn't take a heartbeat for it not to be correct so but we got a new system of place to manage risk so i don't think we've got the risk that we had in the past we do not which is a good thing yes

And then to be in a position we're in is an even better thing.

Yes.

So did that have anything to do with Kemp helping cut the million each year? No. That was us.

That is your spending is down and you have, you're using all of your funds so when a, like the highway for instance, when they have account lines for and liability so nobody was ever gathering all those monies we gather so we spend that money from other departments so that brings our costs down so I guess that's pretty big well then last year we got a lot of we discovered a lot of legacy

practices when it came to the budget. Money squirrel here, there. No one understood why we did what we did. Well, cynical speculation.

In the last two cycles, we spent time actually trying to put funds in the appropriate lines so that we could appropriate it so that we don't have to ask for additional appropriations, nor do we have to go through and go down the whole line of where they were sticking them in a four series and a three series, but it really should have already been in a three series anyway, which was facing a huge burden on public notifications and things of that nature when we needed to move funds because it engaged the council. So we had a little more control.

That actually also is down even with all the other departments in our CUMCAP. Remember how last year they added a bunch of money to our CUMCAP and we didn't know about it? I added all those back and talked with all the departments so some of those numbers went up but some of them decreased and went down so it overall all four funds you're over a million so I want to remind the public and employees that we are closed Friday and we are and so can I add one to that the highway department is closed tomorrow because it's an observation they're not affordable that's our first thing down there And we're going to our insurance audit right now. So that'll be with the work comp audit and the liability audit and all of that. So we were able to decrease there too. Our changes that we've made in our liability insurance and it made an effect and brought our insurance costs down. So I was able to decrease that 100,000. So that's another huge.

Fantastic job going through all that stuff and getting everything taken out that wasn't supposed to be there.

And it's going to get better because we still haven't finished the asset project and we know that a lot of our assets are under and a lot of them are over. So that is an ongoing project that will come to fruition in 27. So you'll be able to see that gain in 27. It's safe work. We'll just love that.

Well, we're planning on adding the new software, the human resource system. I don't know who's picking that in the budget.

That will go into the auditor's budget. It must go there because it's going to be basically for the payroll, which is in... And you look at $60,000, $70,000, something like that, but we'll save that and just

employer savings and more efficiencies that just adds up and the auditor's office is doing away with the still program not necessarily before open enrollment it's kind of upon us but it that's something else that's a savings too by the by the first of by the end of this year

We would like to do away with it.

Because the new HR system will encompass all of that, so it wouldn't be needed.

It just, I think it's going to reduce so much of our risk that it's cost us a lot of money for the past year and a half, so.

That's something we have to put into the other system as well.

Julie, Kevin and I would rather you add that purchase order module.

Yes, ma'am. If you could please add that, we would appreciate that greatly. No.

Ron, that will help us to identify the accrual so if we've got bills outstanding, we don't see them until the bill comes in. We want to be able to see it on a personal order. So if we order a service, it may take two or three months before we see the bill. At least we'll know that we've spent that money so we know what the true balance would be.

So you're doing a different accounting method?

It's a module. It's a module for a personal order. So if we get, if we want to order something, we put it in there so it'd be out there so we know it's the right thing. It's committed. Yeah, we just haven't paid the bill yet. It's committed. We don't have that now.

We don't have that now. That would be nice.

So, you know, if you ask for an accounts payable report, we still have it. Show me our 30, 60, 90, 120 days. We don't have it, and then we're always, and then we're working on it. We identified it. We said, okay, let's plug that hole in our system, so we'll do that.

And then if we can do accruals on that thing, too, it would be better. I think that's the other thing, too, that kind of a staple to come after us on, right? One of the aspects of that, which, again,

Work in process. It just makes it more efficient. So will you be better next budget year, you hope? That's right.

That's what I'm hoping for.

Oh, that's right. You're short on time.

Any other questions?

So you say it was working when you left, right? I think we're good at the moment. Thank you. Thanks, Teresa. I'd like to get it done before I go.

You're on. So did you beat Theresa to the draw in getting your budget submitted or did she beat you?

No, I came up here thinking it would be a shorter meeting and I could do it as soon as I got back. So I need to go.

Surprise!

It is done. So we did go up just a little bit due to the cost of our nature, you know, equipment expenses just for maintenance, fuel, oil, gas, things like that. So it didn't go up a lot, but we did go up a little bit. Other than that, we're just working. If these storms would quit, it would be great, but I think we finally finished cleaning up after the last storm, so hopefully they're out of their system.

So Orchard Road and Hamilton Creek and Christiansburg Road didn't have trees down across them?

No. Well, Beck's Grove and Garrity does. I just got a call, but they're on their way down to take care of it now. But that's it for me.

Did we get the commode back up and going right?

No.

It's goofed up?

It is. Tim has ordered a diagnostic module to hook up to the machine to tell us what the diagnosis is so we're not going to keep sending it out, wasting money back and forth. Tim is great and he can do a lot of in-house stuff if he knows what the code is and what it means.

I'll tell you, just to summarize, The transformation in the highway department over the past couple of years has just been phenomenal. I mean, historically, we were at half staffing, and historically, we were always short on equipment. The new equipment, the old equipment, replacing equipment, and man, a lot. I don't know how much equipment we've got new, replaced, updated, and of course, the staffing and then the training you're putting in, all of the lessons learned, we learned on how OSHA things, you name it. Now we even have IDEM out here on some things. So it's been a phenomenal success story, I think, and the place going forward is even better. So thank you for all the hard work down there. Thank you, staff. And we always like it because we don't get the, my phone doesn't ring off the hook when it comes to the storm. So I think I'm glad to see you guys are ahead of that, too. Absolutely. So great. Thank you. All right. That's Punga Ridge Road at July 16th, guys, A-Mart Lodge, 530. No cost to get in if you're interested. And it ought to be pretty interesting. Updated video and we'll go over the plans for the road. That's all I had. Anybody else? Anyone from the public? Any comments? Hi, my name is Mariah.

I've just come up here to the microphone.

Thank you, Commissioners. I just wanted to come and introduce myself. My name is Mariah Finnamore. I work for Strain Associates. We're a full-service civil engineering firm out of Columbus, Indiana, so just over the highway. It's a nice, beautiful tract of all your trees.

As long as they're not down.

As long as they're not down, exactly.

On your route, that would be state, not us.

So I just wanted to take a second to come and introduce myself and let you know that we're over there. Do you guys have any civil engineering needs?

Okay, thank you. Drop the card off? Yep, I've got some with me. Okay, appreciate it.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Hi, back again. If I could, I just want to add, off topic from what was earlier, like I said, I didn't plan on coming here before I did, and that was not being on your agenda. But mostly I wanted to come introduce myself again. I'm Mike Chavis. I'm the forest supervisor at the Leisure National Forest. We manage public lands in nine different counties in southern Indiana. So it's 205,000 acres total is the National Forest. About 18,000 of those are in the West. In just the state of Indiana? In just in Indiana, yeah. Do you have cars? I'm sorry? Do you have cars? I brought some, but I gave them all away in the hall. I can leave you my number and email. Please do. It would be nice to have it. But yeah, about 18,000 acres are in Brown County. And so one thing I wanted to point out is I run into this misconception sometimes that counties don't receive anything from a financial standpoint because the land is part of us. Well, glad to know you're in the know. And just for the record, it's the most recent payments for the prior year were under the payment in lieu of taxes program was $79,000, a little more than $79,000. And then the Secure Rural Schools funds was about $13,500. So those funds were actually directly distributed to the school district? No, so I think that's part of why I run into this confusion sometimes because the payments come through two different sources and through two different routes and they go through the state and then the state allocates it to the counties. So there's not always a clear direct line that people see between them, but it does come because the national college does. Where does that land?

It'll go into the comptroller's, the auditor's state basically and then they distribute it out through ACH's.

I guess that's another thing that we've learned is that we get into a routine of getting the documentation of the proper things in place at the right time for us. I guess it's been a learning experience.

Well, and again, if there's any issues, whether it was today's topics or anything else in the future, don't hesitate to reach out. I'm always glad to hopefully clarify some misconceptions that are out there or hear what you're hearing from constituents if there's any concerns about the forest. And I'll leave my contact in public.

Thank you. You're not planning on any data centers, right?

I'm sorry?

You're not planning on any data centers? Nope. Okay, thank you.

I'll make a motion to adjourn.