County Council - Regular Meeting

of liberty and justice for all.

Everybody see the agenda? We got one item on it today, but it's a long one.

Anybody need one? Where's our fans out there?

You know what I've learned in the last 40 minutes? The public, they do not like math story problems. Nobody likes math. I didn't hate it in school.

I hated them.

We have some minutes, but I think we'll wait on those until our regular meeting.

They didn't get signed at the last meeting. We need to get them signed. Which ones did we vote on?

Oh, actually, well, we do stuff.

No, we signed it. We didn't sign the meeting or the minutes.

We signed a bunch of stuff.

We voted on the minutes, didn't we? Oh, yeah. We voted on everything. Okay, we voted on the minutes from a regular meeting in April and a week session in May. This is the May 4th minutes. So before we go, we have minutes and the salary events to sign as to what your vote was on it.

If you did, you took it. Do you want to just do that now, Darren, and get it over with?

Yeah. If you want to pass it around, we can get it off the plate and be done with it.

Word. Make sure you sign the right side of it.

Julie's gonna start start us off with what she gave us

And then can we, when I get done, can we add one thing to that? Yeah. Go ahead. I just, I came across, and I don't know, I can't remember what we did, but this was the, this, I found this, that Susan Beaver sent out, and the ordinance on the stipends. We were past that. Remember we talked about killing? That's what we did. I can't remember what we did.

I don't think it was ever signed.

We may not have signed it.

I don't think we got anything but a draft.

Right. I don't remember us ever addressing the stipend issue. That's the stipend issue. I found that going through paperwork.

Did this get put into the salary ordinance?

What? No. In other words, it's not when you don't sign and you don't have anything to put in there.

Okay.

And the only thing I had was the draft. Because the only thing that was changed, let me see. Well, I need to actually see the salary ordinance. You have it in front of you. Come here. No, that's not the salary ordinance. That's just the numbers and everything that was changed.

When not signing...

Just make sure that it stays in the folder.

And then we've signed.

Okay, we need to get with Susan.

Yeah, I need Susan to sign that.

Susan's the only one that needs to still sign. Right. Is Susan with us?

I'm here.

Okay. Hello. We have your contract. It's been signed. It's just waiting for your signature.

Okay.

I can sign a copy and send it over to you later.

Okay.

And that's the subsidy, or the, what was that one called? Subsidy draft, and they probably got everyone after. Susan? Where's that salary order?

Yeah, I don't have a date on it, but you had sent out a draft on the stipends. It was specifically, it says, an ordinance of the Brown County Council establishing a policy to pay only those stipends to county employees and officers that are expressly required by Indiana statute and those stipends for county employees employed at the law enforcement center. And it was a draft. that you'd created. And I guess I have two questions. To the best of my knowledge, I don't believe we as a council ever acted on this draft. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know.

No, I don't think you're wrong.

I didn't get any response to it from anybody, so I don't know if anybody had any questions on it, any changes that needed to be made.

Okay. just not that long. Discuss it. Object.

Okay. But we do need to get back to it. Maybe we'll get it on our next agenda. Well, yeah.

Was any of that from that draft ordinance Rolled into the actual salary ordinance itself. Is it something we still need to do? Where is the salary ordinance read it? Well, there was parts that came to well the numbers you Is that the new one?

I think so. It's the one you just, right?

Or is this, this ordinance is actually, actually stating a policy on, on stipends instead of, instead of what the salary ordinance says. Is that correct? Correct.

So it's a little bit of a mixture of both, right? So there are certain things already in your salary ordinance, like the stipends for the assessor when they receive their certifications, right? Yeah, they're in there. That's already in there, right? And mine. And Julie's correct. This ordinance is the policy, right? So it gives you a little more information about where you that we're changing the amount because that's what's typically included in the statute and it does have the section about seconds

So we need to approve it to pass it, correct? I want to see if I signed it.

All right.

Okay. It's all coming back to you. Yeah, and I mean, I would, it's not going to take 10 minutes. If we just read through it real quick, right, see if there's anything that jumps out, so that we can tell Susan, go ahead and do the final draft, and then you can throw it on the regular meeting coming up this month.

Do we want to go ahead? focus on budgets out like we have pushed this off I know I know I know I'm just trying to get this I just would like to just deal with it and get it done I want to get to it today but while we're on what Julie handed out fine that's fine it's basically the same type of it's for the same thing yeah so it yeah it pertains to this this is transparency forever yeah I really appreciate that a whole lot okay yeah thank you Susan we don't have to

discussed this today, but in future agendas, she also wrote something up about people being absent and voting via Zoom and all that. At some point you need to either pass or don't pass. You need to put that on the agenda at some point.

Yeah. That cost probably this year Normal year

hundred bucks or fifty bucks if you fly like Allegiant or something like that because you know I don't need to take luggage or whatever but I don't know what it would cost now right now so two things then the subsidy ordinance and the virtual meeting attendance memo or subsidy I mean, I don't even know if we need to act on it. I thought it was more of just informational.

No, I think it has to be about...

So we can act, we can...

But it doesn't have to be done today, so... And do we want to address the reedy issue today?

Yeah, we'll get to that. Okay, I'm just... Are you ready for what you... Did you say weed eater issue? Yeah, weed eater issue. I'm just transparent.

I'm glad you're not the only one thinking about weed eating. Is this for transparency so you all know what I've done? I'll say done? Yeah, we're on the other side of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Any notes or comments on this?

This is transparency for everybody to know what I've done, how I've done it. Thank you, by the way. Yeah, this is good. The first one I did was the Form 1s with the actual original salary ordinance, the first one.

Can I ask a question? Mm-hmm is that after and this is 2025 for once Because there were 2026 But on those form ones There were departments that automatically can put in Cola Which I took the base salaries So this is all based off 2025? That's what they asked for in the Form 1s.

That's what I, yes. What you said, yes. It actually has what they've asked for without any kind of... Increase. Yeah.

So basically this is, that's for 2026. Yes. But 2026...

Without any of the 3%.

It was based off 2025 compensation.

Yes.

Exactly. So this is 2025 compensation. Yes. All right. Thanks.

Okay. Then we went to WISC's new number, new things over here is that. Yeah. With the longevity and stuff. Right. Okay. That was the first page. Second page is what I sent out showing the difference between the two. Right. With everybody's stuff. Third page is after Gary, Darren, and I discussed with department heads, you had literally... That's the second side. Sorry, yeah.

So first page, I see that. Second page, how is this different than the first? It's not.

It's just showing that down here, this is our stuff that we pay for added into the salaries. And then you go down here and it's showing this, and then this is just something I came sent out to show you differences. Gotcha.

Okay?

Oh, I see. Yep.

So then we, then the department has... On page two, down at the bottom, the 193 and 479, is that the difference in... That's FICA, Medicare, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Okay? Okay, thank you. Okay, so then this page is when the department head started calling me because I sent out the ordinance and they were not happy because some of these were way over. The department head, some of the department, like the judge. Right. Okay.

So they pushed back.

They pushed back. Darren, Gary and I met with them. Right.

these were the changes that i went over with you guys all of them and what was it specifically they pushed back on it's on the next page yeah all of them they're all right here and the changes that were made yeah so these changes were made some of them were small increases some of them were small i know i've been through it i've looked through it right some of them were decreases some of them were just longevity mistakes some of them that i found some of them were it was just it was I'm not trying to be difficult. I didn't, you know, we've had disagreement, okay? But just because of the way I'm wired and what I do during the day for a living, you know, I have to be extremely conscientious to make sure that when we do stuff with client accounts that we don't make any mistakes, okay? I mean, every I's got to be dotted and every T's got to be, so I'm just programmed to to get down and pay attention to all the details, understand the math, how did we formulate that. So one of my concerns for the implementation process of going from these, you know, and so obviously I've done my own homework, right?

These are the old pay grades that we had in 25, right? 35, I remember.

And so the very first concern I have if I misspeak or you don't agree, please say something. But based off the last 36 plus five would be 44 months. Because you also got to remember when I came in here in January 1 of 2023, I didn't have any historical frame of reference at Young Med at all. So I didn't have any history, right? Now the advantage that I have over that is I don't have any biases, I don't have any perceptions, because I don't have any history. So I'm able to look at everything through a really clean lens. So when we got into this compensation thing, you know, one of the first things is you guys asked me years ago, I don't know if it's 23 or 24, but we had a commissioner's assistant that came up and you asked me to go in and figure out what pay grade would be Right. For that commissioner's assistant. And then the same thing. Based on the old pay grade system. Based off the old pay grade system. And the same thing then with the payroll clerk. Right.

Payroll HR.

So for me to have to take a deep dive into the labor costs and start looking at all these positions and then look at all the stipends that had been handed out over all these years. Right. What I realized is that that whole process was extremely subjective. Okay, because, you know, I'm like, okay, how do you approach, how do you determine a pay grade for a position in an office? So when I looked at that commissioner's assistant, I thought, well, okay, I'm assuming this is what they do, because I didn't, did I look at the actual job descriptions? No. Okay, so I had to go through the departments and try to look for people that have an administrative capacity. And so I thought, okay, well, that one would be administrative, this would be administrative, with the ability to make decisions and basically like, you know, the health department person that manages the health department underneath the doctor, right? Okay. So if they've got, you know, discretionary authority to make decisions over that department, then that's an increased level of responsibility. So I did that, and that's how I determined that pay grade 14, trying to be objective.

Under the old method.

Under the old method. No guidance. No guidance, nothing written. I'm trying to be objective instead of just, because I didn't want to be accused of, well, you like this person, and you want to pay them more money. Well, it happens. It happens, right? Under the old system, that was the law. Right and this the way I understand this new system, you know because again So I went in and I've read that thing that whole packet that they gave us in October three times studied it and basically to sum it up we've gone from 35 pay grades approximately to six categories, 19 classifications, plus special occupation. So if you take the 19 subcategories, because there's six categories, then there's 19 subcategories, And then you have the four special occupation pieces. Highway, safety. Well, they've got health officer, jail matron, jail commander, chief deputy sheriff, coroner, chief deputy. You know, and we pay WIS, what, 50 grand to do this, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. So the issue then is, okay, how do we, the way I understand this, you know, is that we've got these six categories. We've got these 19 subcategories plus the four special occupations. So that's 23. And so how do you go from 35 pay grades to 23? And the way I understand it, the key to this whole thing right here is the classifications should be specifically based off of the job description. Absolutely.

That was the whole intention of it. Yes. Get rid of the subjective...

right it's got to be very objective so not one employee in this county said well you're paying betty lou more than bobby sue yeah because you like betty lou better than bobby sue now we have something right but what i what here's what i don't understand is what who made the decisions to go from where we are right now, who made the decision to look at each position within each department and then accurately classify that job.

And that's why I have asked.

That's what WIS did.

So did WIS make, did they go through every, all 150 employees?

Yes, they did.

And they determined, so when I look at this right here, like there's a whole bunch of civilian poll A's, and there's, well not poll A's, there's a bunch of poll B's, there's a bunch of comm A's, there's some comm B's.

Yep.

Okay, so W, or WC did this, Lori Sheila did this.

Their company, yeah.

All right, so we had no responsibility.

And that's why they're coming in on the 15th to help us with that. We did not have that.

You guys didn't do it. They did it. They did it. Perfect.

And that's what we paid them for. Yeah, right. That was the fee and that's the service. But these changes.

Now, let me ask you this, though. We don't. Have they given us anything to where if we need to that we can? Classify a new job position, or do we have to go to the office?

There were two meetings I want to ask We're gonna do it on the 15th the 9th 15th of July June. It's the same day as our regular Monday meeting.

Okay, so next week we don't have a meeting on Tuesday or whatever? No. June 9th is off. No.

Because I got it on my calendar for next week. I do too, yeah. So June 9th is out.

So it's the 19th. 2 o'clock.

Yeah, okay, I think I got that one down.

So she's going to be able to, that worked out really great for her, worked out good for our schedule because we're here anyway, that leads right into our regular meeting.

So just to be clear, June 15th, 2 o'clock with WIS. Yeah. The only thing that that wish didn't look at was a

the slight changes that they made. We're going to go over that with them.

Which is something we discovered had to do with the job descriptions themselves. Because what they did was, I should say what we did, not what they did. They just went with what we told them. We took job Like they call this somebody over the parks and recs a supervisor. He supervises these summer people. He did not supervise.

For a mowing crew.

Yeah, he just supervised mowing.

He's not overseeing payroll or withholdings or anything like that. That's just leading a mowing crew. Right.

There are variations of supervision and like the chief deputies overseeing 20 people.

Yes, which made his salary go supervising us because we bought parties Rex twenty one thousand eight hundred thirty five dollars Yeah, well his original It went way up.

He was classified too high, and it's nobody's fault. It wasn't WIS's fault. No, it's not. WIS did a fantastic job. That was his job description, and when they took the job description, some of what was in

Another example is the bailiff over at the courthouse. He is a supervisor. He supervises all of that.

He oversees security over the courthouse.

I guess what I'm trying to just get clear in my own mind, again, I'm not concerned about, like, 26. And I'm operating off of an assumption. Here's the assumption, that the goal with this whole FES is to how, the story problem, is how do we go from where we are today to 50% external midpoint?

Well, that's why they're coming in as default.

But hang on a minute, I just want to make sure. If we got some money. Well, that's the problem.

That's a question, I'm not assuming that.

I thought, because we have low, midpoint, high, external, and so what we're trying to do, and I just want to make sure we're all on the same page, because this is where my head's at, the goal would be to get to that external midpoint, because then that means that we, our employees, are competitive with these six, seven counties. That's the goal. That's the goal.

That would be the optimal goal. We may have to settle on 90% of that.

I think it's more of a build-up than actually slamming it all at once.

So we're all good with that assumption, right?

It's a question. It's a question. My issue is we have to start with assumptions.

If you come to me and you're going to retire and you've got X amount of dollars and you're spending X amount of dollars every year, we have to have a baseline of assumptions over the next 30 years.

If you ask me what my assumption is, I think part of it is that balancing the budget structurally.

And what does that mean?

Over time, what does that mean? It means spending the same or less than we bring in, which according to our consultants we did last year. Okay, that's structurally balancing, not overspending.

We got lucky.

We got lucky. Balance the budget and the structurally balanced last year. And that may not hold. That's the goal. It's not jumping to midpoint. No, that's not the goal. The goal is balance the budget. And keep taxes low. Well, you have to do both. And in order to retain particularly high demand positions that we see turning over just frequently costing taxpayers more money, we need to be competitive, especially in those spaces to protect and safeguard taxpayer money in our budget, but also provide fair wages to the taxpayers. all employees you know just fair wages i don't think we need to compete in all of those areas that's what you just said a little bit but yeah much much simpler but you know i don't i don't think we are competing for every position in the county with all of these outside counties and so no but i will say this is that if we are fair-minded and we are competitive to me

My biggest concern with our labor pool, the 150, 155 employees, which is what we have. We don't have 180. We have 150, 155 on any given day. Something like that. Something like that. If we were to go in today and go downstairs, take a look at every department, take a look at all 155 employees, how many employees have been here less than five years?

Well, let's just go with my office. Start with my office. I've got two employees that haven't been here.

The assumption is we have a lot of turnover. Correct. And that is related to the low wages. I'm assuming that. And I think you're right. I assume that, too. I think it's the same assumption.

So if we can reduce that turnover in certain areas. Well, and especially to me, my biggest concern is because, you know, to try to prioritize everything. is I personally do not like, and I'm biased on this, okay, so let me disclose that. I don't like having 17 sheriff deputies that have been here. Less than two years? Yeah. I know. Oh.

That's a liability. That is a potential liability issue. It is.

So we've got 17 deputies that Brand new for the most part brand new All right, and then if we go look at their ages, they're very young, okay What concerns me for the county is and I'm just gonna use myself as an example because I'm an adrenaline junkie and All right, if it's 3 o'clock on a Thursday morning and I get a 911 call for some drunk that just left story, boy, am I excited. I'm going to throw those lights on and I'm going to stomp on that accelerator.

I am.

And I'm going to run that guy down, right? Well, if I run that guy down and the car flips and he dies, we don't have any dash cams. So I am, you know, I am, I want, I would love to see us approve dash cams for those cars because it's probably 225, use some of that money in that GOB bond.

Yeah, Brad is working on that.

Well, I've sat and talked to Brad about it. But we have to approve it to use some of that bond money, right, to buy dash cams for the cars. And the reason I want the dash cams,

is to protect the county from some liability young taxpayers and for the record i want to know when i talk about you know you know inexperience or you know not you know only three years of experience i'm not disparaging anybody the new employees do not have the experience and the older employees who have been there longer.

I'm a lot different today than I was when I was 12, 14 years old.

And the same thing on the sheriff's department, any police force. When you have somebody that's been there two or three years, said, you know, they're hungry for the job, they want to do the job. Patrick, you were a cop from Everest.

Are cops adrenaline junkies? Almost every cop tests type A personality.

But on the positive note... And you like to fight.

Yes, I probably would.

On a positive note, when I look at y'all.

And most do. And so do you. Your dad was a cop. Right. There you go. That's my case. So there you go. And that's part of our, that's a part of it. So we need, we ought to get dash cams. Don't you think? I'm all for it. That's part, also part of what we face.

Hold on, let me, that's part of what we face in the county is that we have, you know, Sheriff's Department, Police Department is alpha, alpha, A type personalities. Yeah. We're kind of a slow county. So if they get paid 20,000 more to go to a place where they're going to get more action. You can't blame them. No. You can't blame them. But I also want to say. They're all good cops.

They're all good guys. Positive note, in my opinion, everybody has to start somewhere and they're young. And if we could retain those young people and they get 20, 25 or 30 years here, I mean, that would just be.

But you're competing against even Bartholomew County. They recently raised all of their pay rates for Sheriff's Department, their municipal department, because they're all competing with the small labor pool because things are disappearing like qualified immunity, if you know what that is. Pardon yeah, yes, so so nobody wants to go into that and qualified immunity if you know what that is Okay And every cops gonna do that and I've been sued I really have been sued for millions of dollars Multiple multiple times but with qualified immunity the department had to take that on and a lot of those cases end up literally maybe paying out $100 But you still go through all of that. But with qualified immunity removed, just like me before, if I did something and I got sued, they couldn't take my house because of my wife, you see. That all goes into qualified immunity. Yes, because they couldn't just come after me.

Have they gotten rid of it?

Well, a lot of states are getting rid of it, and there's a lot of people that are anti-police. I know. Yes, so therefore that's another factor going into nobody wants to go into police work. Yeah, I wouldn't either. That's correct.

They're anti-police until something happens to them, and then they're not so anti-police.

That is correct. So there's all these factors. So when you get a big department like Indianapolis that's paying about $100,000 a year now and you have here, then you're competing with that. So that trickles down. So Bartholomew County gets pretty good. So then they go to Marion County because their people are being shot to death. And it just it's a trickle-down effect so we pay low but but you'll never be able to get a police officer Just to say well, you know Brown County is a little more mellow. So we pay them less. That's never gonna happen But it all adds up to this whole Salary ordinance discussion, which is you know How do we from a 10,000 foot view?

I want to approach our budget this year, and I think what I'm hearing is we have some salary-related items that we need attention. Let's finish going through this first. We will, but some are high demand that we are draining budget impact. We're draining funds because they're high demand. We're getting a lot of turnover, and it costs us $100,000 to train a new officer. Others are turning over because we have very low pay, very, very low pay, in fact. And so those two would be kind of top of my priority is, hey, where are we, you know, truck drivers and officers, jail folks, where are we turning over a lot for salary-related reasons or very low pay reasons? Those are kind of my two areas of focus.

So are you looking at raising taxes? Is that what you're doing with this? No, I'm trying to avoid it.

But all under the guise of balancing the budget. So we start with 2025 slash 2026 salaries. Here's where we are right now. Here's where our projected income is based on everything we know. how much room is there and then we hear from department heads they say hey here are the capital expenses we have that are essential and say how much is left after essential items and then that would be a number we could apply to solving targeted salary issues like we just talked about so it's not in a vacuum we can't just say okay let's spend every dime on salaries when there's a whole lot of else going on that we haven't heard about yet from department heads capital requests requirements dash cameras and building improvements and commissioner items. We've got to factor all those things in and see how much is left to balance the budget. And if anything's left, then we can look at salaries and increasing those. But I think we assume they are what they are until we know what is left in order to balance the budget. And I suggest we do not go over a structurally balanced budget, which is spending the same amount.

What is, take the police department out, emergency services, what is the turnover rate of employees over all year?

Well, if we're going to go by my office. What would you guess? All of them. No, no, no. You know?

Yeah, I know. Now, this would have been maybe because I did it. Yeah. I think it was for the fiscal year. I did it 25 for 24. I think I did it for 24. Almost half of the employees in Brown County had less than five years experience. Yeah. Wow.

So 50% a year we're turning over? Yeah.

Wait a minute, hang on a minute, time out. When I make the claim, because all I did was look at all the employees through all the departments and looked at the tenure, right, and how many years they'd been with the county. So that was half of the employees had less than five years of experience. Now that, the way I understand it, is different than what a turnover ratio is. Okay, because we may have specific jobs within the departments that you turned over, well, payroll last year you turned over five people. That's different than me making a statement that you've got 50% of the people that have less. Longevity. Longevity, that's the longevity. Because what we haven't done is we have not looked at the departments and said, do they hire, lose, you know what I'm saying?

In that list that you have of people with less than five years, one of those people was less than five years.

That's a completely different subject. And we have not done that. Because the problem with that, as I see it, is that you get into this issue of productivity. And if you've got constant turnover within an office. Training. Oh, yeah.

Do we do exit interviews? Customer service. It's very, very, very hard to actually train somebody. Once you get them halfway trained, you're out the door. Right. We have an opportunity in efficiency.

And right now is a good time with turnover in the auditor's office. Everybody in the, well, except for payroll.

So why are they leaving? Is it all money? Is that it?

So two are retiring. Doug and I are retiring. Sandy is already retired. Yeah, Sandy's retired. And I understand that, but overall, overall, like. Yeah, well, yeah, mostly it's money. Because Heather, when Heather was, Heather came in to do payroll. She switched to go over to be chief deputy, which is more money. I mean, everybody that's left.

But the average worker be, why does the average worker be leave? I mean, not everybody's going to be a director or a department head. Do we do exit interviews to find out why they're leaving?

Those are typically commissioner-related tasks where the commissioners would say, hey, department heads, if you have a person leave, you need to do an exit interview and provide that.

Because how can we stop people from leaving other than wages if we don't know why they're leaving?

How do we know that? That's a cultural issue.

Whatever it is, intellectual capital is limited in the county in terms of we don't have mid-level housing where people could be housed and lived here. But you know they're not going to stay here anyway. in that respect in a competitive pool.

But for me, that whole affordable housing thing is those people aren't going to live here. They're going to still work in other counties because we're never going to be able to go up to par. To me, that whole affordable housing thing is a false premise because People, what does the average home cost? About $300,000? Here, probably more than that.

More than here.

So what would you, so some young person starting out, Jim would probably be good at this, some young person starting out has to borrow about $300,000. What's their house payment going to be? And we're not going to make those wages. We're never going to be able to pay those wages here. And what you're going to do is you're going to get people like at the apartment complex down there, and I'm not disparaging anybody or their wages, But that's where I think the majority of our police runs are.

$300,000 house is $1,798.65 a month. Is that for 30 years? That's 30 years at 6%, and that's without any property taxes and insurance.

So that proves my point with affordable housing.

And that's without a $1,200 a month truck payment.

There you go. And breakdowns of things that happen. Can we finish? Okay, no, hold on. So what we have, we have almost a complete turnover in the auditor's office.

This coming year will be very difficult in the auditor's office because there's going to be no one with any kind of knowledge there. Ed's going to be a major asset.

Yeah. We have Ed coming in working with everybody. We have a new auditor who's going to hire her own people.

So will she go in and just clean the house down there?

You can't clean the house anymore. You can only get rid of the first deputy. You can't clean the swamp anymore.

Oh, good.

It is good. That's a good thing. There's not going to be anybody there. But if they retire, you know.

There's going to be an empty office in the auditor's office. So what we have. Hold on. Let me. Let me. What we have, we've been talking with Lau, we've been looking at certain efficiency programs in our payables, our payroll, receipts, receivables, all that stuff to automate some of that. What that's going to do is, through attrition, we can reduce our workforce because if we automate and get us into the 20... first century, we can have jobs that go a whole lot smoother. And we're not going to need five people in the elder's office. We may need three because we have. Good luck with that. It's an example. We're going to have efficiencies in that kind of stuff. Same thing with the treasurer's office. We've got, well, like we did with the innkeeper's tax. We're not sending out booklets now, paper booklets, with a coupon for every month for every rental that somebody has. They go online and pay it through the state. That's a task that's completely taken out of the treasurer's office now. Hours a month. So we have opportunities going forward, and that's one of the ways we can reduce our

So you're talking about increasing productivity, decreasing headcount.

Yeah.

Okay, given that, is there any value, and it's sort of happening in the auditor's office, going back to ground zero and starting over? Just for the principle, not that anything's wrong, just that we get out of the tribal mentality and say, okay, just like you said, we're doing paper instead of paper, we go digital. To just say, okay, let's assumingly, as best as we can, start over, almost in every department. With that mentality... And just see, let's just refresh it and not assume that because we've done it this way, we're going to keep doing it.

I would support that 100%. Yes. I would support it 100%. Start with a clean slate.

Right. No assumptions in there.

Right. I would support that too, but in June we're too late. to do that.

Well, I'm just saying, is there value in doing it, whenever and however?

Yeah, but can I say something? May I say something? Okay, how long have we been having these special session meetings?

Can you say something? Sure, go ahead. We'll let you.

Just this once, Jim. In two minutes. No, real quick. It is 10 till 10. This is the first special session meeting, I'm going to make the claim, ever to where we've ever had the eight of us by ourselves in a room. Yeah, we're on YouTube TV. That's fine. to where we can actually have an open, relaxed conversation, big picture, to discuss what you just, for example, you just brought up. Because we've cut, because, well, but this so far, this conversation has been an extremely healthy conversation.

You've made a lot of good points.

I just care about, I just want us to be successful.

We are an hour in.

Yeah, but this is a good conversation. I could sit here all day long and do this all day long. It's a conversation we kept doing this. We're covering a lot of stuff, but the only thing we're going to do is we've got to go back. Do you want to say something? I do. Okay, can she say something?

I'm sorry. As to his point, if you don't have any knowledge going into the office space, This office, the auditor's office. You're going to have problems. Problems? Oh, yeah, major problems. Not just a little bit of problems, major problems.

This is where the department head listening session is key because you're going to help us avoid those problems.

I'm hoping to.

As we talk to you because we'll need the Jackie to support that position, right? Jackie's running for auditor.

Jackie is unopposed for auditor. Oh, wow. She's leaving the AIC. Oh, wow. Clinton County.

Clinton County? Okay.

Thank you. I think that's Frankfort, isn't it? So is Ed an asset to going to Ground Zero in your office? Ed is a major asset.

Okay. But you still have to know everything the state wants you. I mean, like I just got back from conference. Do you know how many things are changing in just that fast? And then when I go to conference again in October, it's going to be a whole different ball game and we're going to have a whole other thing to do. And this is what they do to you every time you go to a conference.

And then legislature gets in session and they change it again. And there you go.

And it's not something that you're just going to be, you're going to jump into and you're going to know. I mean, I'm just now to the point where I'm comfortable with all this information. Where as before, it was like you're constantly having to try to be, you know, figure it all out. Now they're changing it all, so the person that's coming in next is going to have to learn how to do the own steps, the mortgages, and it's not like it used to be. It's not on the thing like it used to be. So you're going to figure it out. And then you have different changes with the veterans' deductions. I mean, the person doesn't know anything about transfers. They don't know how to read a deed. They don't know how to do anything to that effect. They don't know what the rules are for it. So there's another issue.

And people think that's simple. Being a recorder, from being a recorder, it's not simple. No, it is not simple. It is not simple. It is not.

And then you have the surveys coming in. I mean, there are so many different aspects of this job or this office. that just are not, you know, you can't, you're going to bring in all these new people and they're not going to know anything within two, three, four, five months.

So as a department head, and we're listening to a department head now, which is really helpful, what would you say, like for next year, budget-wise, knowing that, what should we be prepared for change-wise? Because that sounds like a different scenario than we have today with you.

Amber is going to be, she's leaving the office to go over to be chief deputy at the assessor's office. Or at least that's the last plan I heard. Could change? I don't know. Kim, after she gets her CERN certification, I don't know what will happen there. And I can tell you right now, that will be one major loss. Major loss. Because she knows her job.

We can't afford to have turnover in that office, in that position.

I'm just saying.

She knows what she's doing.

She's very good at her job. But if she can go out there and make $60,000 or better.

True.

So there's two. What else? Help us understand what we should be thinking about budget-wise. Auditor. I mean, training comes to mind, right? Additional training.

Training is definitely...

So what can we use that for? Can we use that in that respect?

So potentially Andy... Andy's aware of some of the things that are there. But can she go... Because I don't know what the legalities are. Can she go to these trainings that you're going to to learn stuff that's happening in the fall?

She would not be going as an elected official yet. No.

She could go with me, but I don't know if she has time.

I don't know why she wouldn't be able to go. To be honest. What else budget-wise?

Budget-wise, okay.

All right, well, here, let's do this. When you're going to ask budget questions, let's go to, as we pay Reedy a lot of money. Okay. Why?

Is that why we pay Reedy a lot of money? Good question.

I mean, that's a good question.

I mean, seriously. No, that's a good question, because here's the issue. We've already paid them in five months $36,000. I know.

That's not totally accurate, so... Okay, but I don't want to go there. That's what the bills are. I've got the breakdown of that. I've got it. But anyway, let's not worry about that right there. We'll come back to your question. Because the why question, that's a really good question. And we ought to have that conversation. Thank you.

And we will. We'll come back to it. We need to have that conversation.

I don't want to disrupt the forum. So, Scott, for 26, there was $393,062 is what we budgeted for the auditor's office.

Okay.

That's what we approved in October for the 2026 budget. So, you know, what we're going to have to look at is the total all-in. And I will come back to you on the 27 budget. What I would really prefer us to do, you know, there's an old saying, how do you need an elephant? One piece at a time. So it would behoove us to really narrow our focus, is my primary concern, Is just the general fund. Okay. Okay. Because that's $10 million. Hopefully 10 and a half, maybe 11. I don't know what it's going to be in 27. Okay. Because keep in mind on the general fund, you know, about, and this is approximate, there's about a third of that revenue is property tax. Another portion of that revenue is miscellaneous revenue, which I understand is what we generate internally as a county. And then a big chunk of it is actually income tax.

So that's what makes up that 10, 10 and a half, 11 million bucks. And our LIT certifications are getting ready to change as well.

And then when you transfer over and you look at labor costs, and now this is an old report that I did, this was for 2024, but it's gonna be fairly close. The big BHAG is, let me just roll through this. Commissioners and Council, 4.69% of labor cost. Administrative, Administrative is Auditor, Assessor, Recorder, Treasurer, Survey, GIS, Survey or GIS, APC, Area Planning Commission, 12.8% of labor cost. Social Services, Parks and Rec, Purdue Extension, Veterans Services, Soil and Water, 4.73%. Environmental, infrastructure, health department, highway department, 18.23. The justice system. Dispatch, sheriff's department, school resource officer, emergency management, animal control, jail, community coordination, clerk's office, prosecutor, circuit court, public defender, probation office, coroner, 60%. So a big section of our budget is really coming out of the justice system.

Jim, on that. I think that 60% is where we see a lot of intense competitiveness on neighboring counties. So there's kind of an overlap in our big, unfortunately, our biggest.

So 60% labor cost is going out of justice system, but you're right, that's the same time where we've got this upward pressure on labor cost. So if we go in and increase that 10 or 15%, then boom. so it to me it would behoove us to go in and look at you just focus zero in on the general fund and I say this because there's like 173 funds we have 173 revenue sources yes and that's an

another thing that when you come in if you don't have any idea what those funds are used for what they can be used for where they go so whoever's coming into the office will need to know or at least learn the funds where the funds go how they can be used I mean it's not something you can just step in oh yeah you can do that you can't do that You can't always take a deed and Yes, I have actually had a book made with some of the code with what they can be used for but I think there's new stuff now that needs to be I need to probably have to go back over it and put some more in there, but There's so much aspect into that and not just that but the recorders office AJ is Amazing. Absolutely amazing in there. He knows his stuff.

He does.

Not just in the recorder's office, but in my office. He comes and goes through the books. He takes people over there. He shows them what there is. I mean, he is an amazing person, and he's got the knowledge. And if you didn't have anybody that has knowledge of these offices, it's going to be a total show.

So Jim, so general fund and the percentages you read are labor coming out of the general fund, is that right? No, this was overall.

Most of it comes out of general fund, to answer your question. Yeah, we do take, now like for example, the highway department, The highway department isn't paid out of the general department. Well, no, wait a minute. The health department is 1159. Yes, they're on fund. Right. What I understand from Susan Beavers and Jerry Hickman, and I don't have them internalized, but I know that is 1159. 1160. Well, 1160, that's the Indiana Department of Health. that could go away right so but the health department's primarily 11 it's 11 59 but whatever they spend out of that if if we allow them to increase their labor cost in 11 59 what that ends up doing is reducing our property tax revenue for the general fund Because there's the $1,159, the $1,000, and then there's two more little funds that I can't think of that, and maybe Susan, if she's listening, she can remind me, because she sent out an email on this, that there's four funds that the property tax revenue gets dropped into.

Yeah, they have to reset their own levels.

Is it QCAPS, the other one? Or development? I don't know. I don't remember the other four.

Reassessment.

Reassessment is one. And what's the other one, Susan?

Uh... Your Q cap.

Okay. Yeah, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think I understand this, but if you've got, let's say you've got those four funds, and if I got, because I think of property taxes, you've got this one big bucket of money, school corporation basically takes 60% of it, we get the other 40, and then it gets dropped down into these four funds.

If one grows, the other doesn't.

Right, so if we allow the health department just to, drops down the general fund. So it's a fascinating story problem. So back to the labor costs. most of the labor costs, with the exception of health and the highway department. And there's some special ones in here, like I think we get money for the school resource officer that doesn't come out of the general fund.

We get a portion, don't we? We don't get 100% of it, is that correct?

No, we get the 100%. Do we get 100% of it? The school pays us for the resource.

Oh, okay, the school pays, okay, all right.

So the exercise would be, to me, we ought to probably create this same report, because it's kind of big picture, top down, right? and then back out some of these labor costs that don't come out of the general fund to see where we are. And then from there to go in and because there's only four categories on the Form 1 because you've got professional services, right? And then help me out. There's three I don't have memorized.

You have professional services. You have labor costs. You have, oh my gosh. You have a labor center. Service, no. Services.

There's four categories. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. Thank you. I hate it when I do that. I know, and I don't have it memorized. I seriously hate it when I do that. Yeah, there's four categories.

It's like, there's four major ones.

And the big one is the labor costs, professionals.

Huh? Professional services.

200s are supplies.

Yep. Thank you.

And then 400s is the capital.

Yep. She's right.

Yeah.

Yeah, because that's like $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, $4,000.

So getting that discussion back to the budget and how we move through it. We're in June. We are in June. I already have my first budget. Good. So she's got one come in. Let's put them on our next work session agenda and talk to them early, get ahead of it.

Well, you better because she's going out for surgery.

Good. Let's do that. Perfect. So anyway, how we operationalize this, and we're talking about general goals. We're talking about general goals, but the question becomes very quickly. Immediately, how do we start doing those things? It's not just a discussion.

Our next work session is after July 1st. July 1st, we're supposed to have the formalization, correct? So our next work session, our July work session. We're going to have all that information, so we're going to devote the entire work session to looking at those. We don't necessarily need department heads in here, but if we have questions, we can ask them.

I don't think we should.

Because the department heads are going to meet with us during the three-day budget hearings. At the end of July. So our next July work session would be us looking over those Form 1s and getting our questions in order from them.

Our question's in order. And I would like to see that work session, what I would advocate for, is I've got all of last year's forms once for 26. I got them in a file. We have the 27th. And why would we want to walk through every department?

Yeah, that's what we can do in our work session.

So that when we have the three-day meeting, we know what questions we need to be asking. And we literally, somebody placed secretary.

So drill down on that, though. When you say review 26 compared to 27, you want to see what changes are made. So are we going to see that, though?

Well, we can look at it. Now, I think in 23 or so, Joel and I went through, we got a five-year history, and we went through the budget with Teresa while she was in the auditor's office, and we picked out about $100,000 of dormant funds that didn't need to be there. So do we want to move towards ground zero in this thinking at that time to make a non-assumptive approach to say, okay, why are you doing this?

Well, that's the question, is that, you know, just because it's going up or down doesn't mean it's... Well, let me push back a little.

No, carry it forward. Well, hang on a minute. We've got, to me, there's the expense side, right, which is the form ones. Those are our expenses. Then on the other side of the fence is understanding what the revenues are going to be, accurately forecasting the revenues for 2027 to get prepared for whatever's coming down the pike on this whole property tax, income tax thing. How is that going to affect our revenues? A lot.

So who at the table can do that for us?

So to me, my frustration is, where I'm frustrated, okay, 23, you know, because I've been through the 24 budget, 25 budget, 26 budget, this is the 24th budget, okay? So I'm learning as I go through this, right? is that where we can improve is A, really understanding what the overall expense is, but then more importantly, accurately forecasting our revenues, okay? And make sure those dang revenue projections are accurate because in 23, yeah, for the fiscal year of 23, We got real lucky because there was the $2.5 million that showed up. Out of nowhere, had we not had that $2.5 million, we'd have been in trouble. Last year, we got lucky. We got more money coming in than we had anticipated.

Well, we spent less in the...

So we've got to pay attention to, you know, is the revenue coming in as anticipated? If not, why? And where are we, you know, and maybe on a quarterly basis, I don't think we need to do it month to month, but at least quarterly, we ought to narrow our focus because here, you know.

And if possible, I'd like to try to put some money into the rainy day. Oh, we have to do that. We have to do that. And so there's some revenue.

Where do we get good figures? Does it come from Auditor? Ed Wadila? And could Ed help with that?

That was what I was going to say. To our reports, we have a computer over here in this office now. We can all log in.

He said he would teach us. Wait a minute, so does the council actually have an office?

Well, it's not an office. We have a computer to go in.

But do we have an office back there? We have an office space back there. It's council office? Yeah. Really?

Not official. There's a computer. There's a computer back there. We can get online and run all the reports we want individually. Really? And he said he would show us how to do it.

Yeah, because I don't know how to do it.

It's not difficult. No. Now, is there any value in taking that to these conferences you're going to to understand the data? Before you get there, who's going to do the revenue projections?

That's the thing. You can't. We don't know our revenues until they tell us what they are.

Honestly, I plan to take Ed with me to my next conference. You plan? Yeah. Good. All right, now.

Some of the revenues we're not going to know until we have the fact. This is great. I'm really having fun with this conversation. What is? This is a good conversation. This is a fabulous conversation.

It actually has been.

Reedy.

Yes. Okay. I got your email. Are you skipping to the...

Well, I'm going to tie it. This needs to be tied in to your question on revenues. Okay. Year-to-date fees for Reedy is $29,828.04. Because they sent us the December invoice. Right?

Yeah, but we just got more.

We paid in January, so that number you threw out is more. It's more because it includes the December.

No, that would have been $39,000. We just got more invoices.

Okay, well, I'm going to try to walk through my perspective on reading. Let me give you an example. Okay, go ahead. All right. He's got down here in April. Executive session on 4-2-26. First quarter financial update. Income tax projections based on HEA 1210 for meeting. First quarter and legislative presentation preparation for May executive session.

Executive session?

I don't know. I think we were executive. That's this meeting. Works. Okay. 45.5 hours is what we got billed for. All right? $10,087.50. Now, the hourly rate that they're charging, this is a very, very, very competitive rate, but I think where we are making a huge mistake, huge, is... when we say, well, let's just have Reedy come in and do this, this, this, this, this, and we don't think anything about it. Hey, can you guys come in and do this, this, this? And then they do it. And then they come back and charge us $10,000 for it. Now, I'm just trying to be very forthright. Would I personally pay $10,000 for that meeting when he brought all that in? No. Why wouldn't I personally do that? Because the information they gave me was great, but how much time did I actually spend down trying to internalize the information that he gave me? Zero. So that's like, you know, so we need to be very careful and we need to get what I'm going to recommend that we do is before we go just saying, hey, you guys, you're the president. Here's what we're talking about. How many hours is that going to cost? That's what I was saving for our discussion on radio. So going back to here, going back to here, and the budget process, right? Because this right here, we paid for this last year. I don't know the total bill for this, but I don't go anywhere without it, okay? Because this is what we actually adopted. How much is it going to cost to have them do a complete forecast on what primary funds do we want to look at?

And is there enough value that we can get out of it?

because we have to have it. That's right. How accurate can it be?

You can't balance a budget if you don't know how much money is coming in. Can Jackie do something on that area?

I was going to say, I thought Ed... Even Ed isn't... The value in reading, which we need... I was going to say this until we actually got into Reedy, but the value in Reedy is our revenue projections.

Yeah, well, it's this. I like this. Yeah. Because this is the budget. We can look up any department.

They'll tell you where you are. What we need to do going forward with them is, like I said, put expectations and limitations on what they're doing. Well, like one thing Jerry said at the April or May work session meeting was the one guy he had was going parcel to parcel. Wait. checking for so i think that's part of that 45 hours i mean he was going through parcel at a time looking at i think that might be a little bit of overkill

Here it is. Updated parcel level data with 2025 information to update SEA1 property tax implications, executive session presentation, and binder prep executive session 5726. budget form one request excel sheet per meeting charges seven thousand there was thirty two dollars thirty two and a half hours seven thousand six dollars fourteen cents so those two meetings right there that's seventeen thousand dollars i'm not saying they're not doing anything i'm not saying yeah we got to be careful yeah i mean we've got a budget it has to be something that means something to us and if they're

If we're getting charged for stuff that we're never going to see or use or legislation is going to completely change that, then we just spend a bunch of money on something that's irrelevant to us.

Well, see, that's why Ed's going to be a good asset. Ed can internalize a lot of that and he'll also activate it with us. the monthly reports, get in with it, understand what's going on. We're asking a lot of Ed, though, he really is.

He's getting to the point. What he's done is he's worked to the point. He might. He's talked to me. Yeah, trying to find that source of funding, get the label on what the department is actually getting that money. He's gone through and cleaned up all that. Between him and Andy, they should be fine. We can go over there. on doing that, what we need to do, but we can go over there and get into LAO and pull up any report we want with any information we want. Any department, right? Yes, any department. We can go just one department. There's all kinds of menu items you can click to get the exact information you want.

And he said we just need to set the time with him and he will teach each of us how to do it.

That is available to us. So that's something. Let's go back to Reedy for one second.

I know, but I'm getting to it.

If Reedy is doing some of that, that we can do ourselves. No need.

Yeah, I want to bring the bills in and have each of you sign them once we get them. So, you know, what it's good idea. Yeah That's that's a big thing for me.

Yeah See what's on it.

Yeah Exactly or the next auditor same thing with Susan beavers Expectations and limitations. Yeah, we'll see.

I mean nothing against you Susan.

I want to see how the balance is

Not that I don't like Reedy, I just, you know. Right, right.

No, I like, there's some amazing stuff they've given us, but I think we're probably getting.

My favorite word is transparency, right? Accountability. I mean, it's accountable. I mean, if we can't, if we don't hold each other accountable. Sign it, sign it. Right. So that I know you've seen it and you know what's on it.

Right. Okay, backing out of the Reedy stuff and back onto the rule we were on. I remember the road we were on. Yeah, I was on these.

Hey, you do remember. I always watch these videos afterwards. I watch every movie.

You must have nothing better to do.

No. Have you ever watched a movie and then you watched it a second or third time? Yeah. And you pick up stuff. Yeah, that's the reason I do it. I go through it. Yeah.

Yeah, we got it.

To see what was missed, what was said, and then also to make sure I keep myself under control.

I've got to say, you're doing a really good job. You are, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Try to knock on wood. I get frustrated. So, Jim, you were talking about prioritizing the general fund. side, and then on the revenue side, step one is getting the forecasting of revenues so we know how much we can operate within to balance our budget.

To get back to you, structure. To me, and I've said this before, it's in my head, right, is you gotta operate, to me, you have to operate on a set of assumptions. So to me, I know we're not gonna get there in 27, we're not gonna get there in 28, we're not gonna get there in 29, maybe 2030 we could get there. Maybe, depending on if our revenues increase. But if our revenues increase, well, if they're not, then what's going to happen is we will start writing red ink, okay? And because that cash reserve balance in general fund historically, it's low, low periods, right? But the rule is this 90-50 rule that I threw out. Yeah, it's a big, hairy, audacious goal. It's a big, hairy. But to me, if I use that and say, okay, I want our expenses to be 90% of revenues. So then when we do the 27 budget, we say, okay, where are we in regard to, we're at 101%, let's say, right? Well, we're over, right? But it gives us something to benchmark ourselves against because the thought process, which is real simple, If we can get 50, get our, just the general fund for right now, just general fund, we're 4.3 million, 1231 of 2025, I think, in cash reserve balance in the general fund, right? If we've got $11 million coming in, then theoretically wouldn't it be great if we had $5.5 million in there? Because if we were at 90% of revenue and our cash reserves were growing, that's how we fund the rainy day fund. And what we're trying to really ultimately solve for is when that $4 million general obligation bond matures, can we have enough cash in the rainy day fund to pay cash?

So if we go into that direction, what if we get monthly reports that show, let's say, okay, our goal is 90%, right? Right. We get monthly reports that say, here's the flex in each department that we have available to work with. You know, one big one will be the health, you know, that's a big chunk to see. And then we can track each month to see how do we move it towards 90%. Right. Well, yeah.

The problem is with that approach is the funding comes in, in some cases, in massive chunks twice a year. Yeah, that's the problem. So you can't monthly do it, but you can do it back during the year.

I know, but at least you're tuned in to say, okay, we need this much coming in. If it does or doesn't, we know what to do. Right.

Yeah, we need a monitor for that. But all the expense you can do monthly, and we need to do that. And when we see over-expense line items per month, we know, hey, we're starting to – We have time.

Look, labor cost, and when I say labor cost, I mean all in. You've got PERF. Okay. So, because you've got to remember, let's say we've got, if you add FICA in, FICA tax, unemployment, workman's comp, blah, blah, blah.

Fully burdened. Everything fully burdened.

Fully burdened, right. Yeah, because these numbers here are net. They're not fully burdened. That's a good phrase. I like that. Fully burdened. And then you've got $2.7 million for group medical for 2020. Apex gave us. That's a guess. That was a projection.

Well, it's a money. They're running Monte Carlo. They're running Monte Carlo.

So, yeah, I should have said that. Yeah. And then you've got 1.1 million in pension benefits, which is you get the Sheriff's Department, 435, and you get approximately 700,000 in PERF. So that's 1.1 million. So we've got this, say, 8 million plus 2.7 million for group medical, and then 1.1 million for pension benefits. So if you add that up, what is that, 4 million and 8? It's $12 million. So that's the big rocks. And then you've got the little stuff. which is how many cars do we buy a year? And speaking of that, I got an update if you want to hear it on the corners. We don't want to take that exit yet. I will go off the tangent, yeah. So how do we manage, how many cars do we have? Because I don't, what are, besides labor costs, pension benefits, and good medical, and how do we reduce them?

Capital assets.

How do we manage them? Well, capital assets, is that like putting new windows in this building? And cars. Cars, so those are operational expenses, right?

No, cars are capital. They're capital expenses. Yeah, but that's an appreciated asset.

Right, but I know. We all agree. buying a vehicle. It's still a capital expense. It is a capital expense.

I'll give you that. That's fine.

Anything over roughly $50,000 or $25,000.

Like the health department, I found out here just recently, the health department has a 2024, I think, a Ford F-250 Powerstroke sitting over there. They don't drive. They bought it to haul trailers.

Well, they don't drive them. It's an emergency.

It's got like 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 miles on it. Right. Yeah. 2024, brand new. They bought it new. Power stroke, three-quarter tons. Out of their money. EOC equipment.

Yeah. It's to pull the equipment. Emergency. Now they're over here.

They're having conversations over there now, the board and everybody, about maybe they can trade it in and then maybe get a gas truck or something. I don't know. They're talking about getting rid of it. So vehicles are just real expensive. And so I don't know what we spend every year. What do we spend every year?

Especially trading in a two-year-old diesel. The depreciation on that is going to wipe out every bit of savings they do from diesel to gas. I think Ed then.

you know, copier paper, toilet paper, toner cartridges, printers, all of that. That's the nickel and dime stuff you can rack up a lot real fast too.

But you change in a jar and it fills up quick.

Yeah, yeah. And so it's a fascinating story problem.

Your change fills up faster than mine.

It doesn't fill up real quick. It's going to fill up. I don't know how many pennies. I've got a lot of pennies. They still add up.

So to me, I would revenue, lock in on the general fund. Next month in July, right, because I think we got a meeting scheduled, like we could spend all day doing it. We did that, didn't we? And then let's just walk through every department by ourselves with no interruptions and just compare 25, 26, and 27. that we need to ask.

When we go into that, we need to understand that we're not answering the questions ourselves. We're coming up with, because we're not going to have the department answer the questions. We're not going to get the questions answered today. We're just nailing down the questions.

This example I can give you for me personally.

So what we need to do is we need to mind the hypotheticals that we're going to all get ourselves into.

The two that jump out at me that I'd really like to have clarity on, and I don't, is diesel and gasoline annual expenditure on our fuel cost. Total fuel cost. All I have for the entire county. Yeah, that ought to be fairly easy.

I would think they could get that.

They can. It's from Mary. I could go down there and call from Mary.

No, it's $3,000, $4,000. I know, but it sort of grabs you. Are you going to buy it so much at this fixed cost, or are you going to wait and play the odds until it goes down?

I just want to know what we're spending a year on fuel costs.

Did you say $900,000 in fuel? Yes.

How much? The commissioner's was $60,000 last year.

When do we get council cars?

I'm just bringing that up as an example. And then the other one, I know that in the commissioner's office, there were 600,000 for 2026 for insurance. Oh, yes.

That's a lot of money.

But they've been working on it.

They're doing a good job because they're finding out that we were ensuring Senate intersections and streets or something like that.

I don't know what it was.

They've been going through that.

So to your point, if we're going to review that information in that meeting, Are you saying we're going to see 26 compared to 27 with a budget difference listed for us?

Well, I was going to ask.

And if so, who's going to do that?

I was going to ask in like the Form 1s if it's going to be different from 25 to 26, 26 to 27. We used to do that teacher thing, which I really kind of hated, but it was a good idea.

It answered this question.

It did answer that question. Here's the difference, and why is there a difference?

Or here's a new line item that there is no comparison to as well. It's not just comparison because there are new things happening, new expenses, new vehicles. And so it's not just the same as last year. It changes. Hold on.

I just went back to something, and I want to clarify it. July, you had asked earlier about July 9th. I was thinking June. July 9th.

No, it's June 9th. No, he said June 9th. But we have a, our special session meeting in July is 15th. No, not the special. We did move that to the 9th. Oh, we did move the special.

Because you had a conflict and somebody else had a conflict. That's July 9th. She may have limited information but we can still go through

Just use the paper. I mean, I have all the forms. I'll be sending you out the form ones. I have form ones for 23. I have form ones for 24. I have form ones for 25. I have form ones for 26.

Why don't we just do it like we used to do it which it's already done like line by line they go through and do the teacher They tell us this is this plus percent based on last year. I mean, we've done that for 20 years, right? Well, here's what historically happens.

What happens in the budget hearings is we show up and some council members, that's the first time they're seeing it, the first time they've opened up the book to see the budget lines for the district. The next year's budget what we do as a council We all go through those form ones at our work session meeting so we are seeing it ourselves the budget so we have guidance on what's going to happen so we don't waste a bunch of time at the budget hearings right so we should each individually go through line by line before the meeting and do the numbers and calculations individually each of us if you want to but before we can do that we've got to know when the meeting is let's do at the meeting we need to know what the meetings are can we get that cleared up yes july the 9th is July 9th, okay is our is our work session special session, okay? Yes, okay July

I don't have anything in July.

No, this is June. What's July 15th? July, yeah, sorry. What's July 15th?

Okay, so see why we have, this is really confusing.

Okay, that's our July 9th. That's our meeting. That's our meeting. June 15th. Okay. I know.

is when lori is coming in at two o'clock yes and that'll be till five thirty seven o'clock or whatever until yeah i thought that was on a regular meeting she's coming in before it changed it's the same day july the 15th is on a wednesday june june 15th is our council he's working in reverse and then forward and then reverse this is clear as mud isn't it yeah it's real clear yeah

Yeah, there it is.

So we've got two meetings. One July the 9th at 9 o'clock. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Special session, work session. And then June the 15th at 2 o'clock. Correct. June 15th. Thank you.

A week and a half from now. Okay. On June the 15th, you're going to be here from 2 o'clock until 8 p.m. And which meeting are we going to be reviewing the Form 1s? That would be the... special session meeting.

That's another reason we moved it to the 9th was because it would give Julie some time to

We got to be here. We're here until we get it done.

We resolved that it's going to be a digital format that Reedy or somebody was going to sell.

Yeah, it was all supposed to be digital, right?

Is that in play? That's all I'm asking.

Because if it is, then we go through and instead of line by line, paper to paper, you just do a formula, boom, pull it down, and it tells us, right? We don't spend five hours doing it.

But who's going to do that work?

It takes a couple moves.

It takes a couple of $225 an hour to do that? No, I'm just saying we could use that. How do we get it? Let's not have Ed do it. Yeah, it's not difficult. We need to create a form that goes out.

They did create the form that goes out, but that adds extra work to me because I have to put it into lab. That's a lot of work, guys. And then I'm going to have to put it into their stuff. What about Ed?

Can he do that?

That's a lot of work. I'm just saying. Yeah, but it's a lot of work.

The whole purpose of Julie getting that Excel spreadsheet was to give to the department heads that they were going to fill out their own Spreadsheet information digitally and get it to use into just drop it into one document.

It's a lot. Is that how it's working? That was the point. Is that how it's working? Way less work.

That's ground zero.

Is that how it's going to work? It's kind of like 2000. That's what I thought. It's like 21st century type of. I can send it out to them, but I don't know.

They're so used to doing the form ones that. I don't think they'll... I thought the whole purpose of the Excel spreadsheet was for them to do that themselves. That's what I thought it was, too.

But you don't have to do all that. Yeah. Well, nice. But I'm still going to have to do the entering because I've got to enter. Into Laos.

And maybe you can't export it.

Then I can export it into Gateway from Laos.

If it's in the Excel, you can export it from the Excel into Laos.

Yeah.

We'll show you how. Yeah. Yeah. That's why we did that. That's what I was doing with the Excel spreadsheet.

Now we're making progress. Let's assume we can get that digitally into LOW. And let's assume that LOW has not just this year's budget, but it has last year's actual budget. Then let's also assume that we can do reporting out of LOW, which is why we bought that, and that we can run a report that compares 26 to 27 that shows us the difference. So we are not sitting here for five hours with an attorney on the line and a financial consultant on the line on our time wasting it. So that's what I think we should do.

It makes sense.

Ed said we did not set up Lyle to give us good reports of that day training.

We've got to make it happen in Lyle, and we can't.

To clarify. May I ask? To clarify.

To clarify.

Are we going to direct the department heads to enter that information into that Excel?

We already did. Yeah, we did.

We did direct them.

That's what I'm wondering. Is that in play or not? It needs to be. Somewhere it needs to show up.

I didn't know it was directed.

I know. We talked about it.

We talked about it and they sent it to see if it was going to be feasible.

They said they could do it.

The only thing that I knew about.

But they haven't produced anything at this point, correct?

They sent me a piece. I saw it.

They sent us all that piece.

And I thought it was going to go to the department heads.

But I don't know. I'll send it out to the department heads. But maybe we need to direct it.

Wasn't that everybody?

I thought that was all you think. It would be a generic page for department heads.

If not, we need to buy a bunch of number two pencils.

I'll send the page to you guys so you can see what it is. And then you tell me what you want me to do.

okay scantron forms i can i need to look at that we've got it it was sent out to us it was yeah we got it so you but i don't know but you asked questions and should we break this down more or leave it and and and i don't know if it went from there on but and i think gary asked shouldn't it be drug department department head and so they get everybody's they just get their own department and i think that's probably a right in a perfect world that's great but you could also there are some department has that have items outside of their technical department area like whatever and so i think i think it's but and you can also control what they can enter and edit and so you can send the full list and they can only control their department which is kind of what reedy was suggesting is there's a read only on the other sections but in their section so either way i mean But to go back to paper is what you're complaining about. It's a lot of work. And we thought we solved that. And we thought that solution would cause us to be able to actually review information in a more timely fashion, which we're pushing the limit timelines as it is if we go back to the paper.

a recess.

Wait a second. Before we do that, let's solve what we're talking about. Let's not just move on. What are we going to do here?

I'll send it out to them and tell them, hey, instead of your form, why don't you fill out this

But here, I would also like to talk to Ed about that, because when we talk ground zero, and if he gets in at that stage, we've got a good base.

He can pass, he can protect the cells that aren't in the department.

I'll talk to him tomorrow. He can protect and process better than, you know, paying Reedy.

I'll have him come in and look at what Reedy sent me tomorrow.

You should send us out something as a suggestion.

The whole reason for that was so that we could actually review the Form 1s in a timely fashion as a council with our current budget timeline constraints that we're under. If we can't, it gets even tighter. So we said, hey, let's do this. So, okay.

If he gets in at the base of the Form 1s, then he can put the reports in and track them downstream better.

Man, she can upload and allow a bunch of manual entry. Then we can compare year to year. That's right.

So we're gonna look to add to possibly come up with that input form generate that input form for the department heads correct and you're gonna champion that So we're gonna reinvent the wheel

You want him to do this instead of the Form 1? So what's in all this for Ed that he's... Well, is it instead of the Form 1? So he's basically making the Form 1 into a digital form. By department, hopefully. Correct. By department. Correct.

Because we're assuming they... Like that digital... Forensic setup into like a form one each individual office can do exactly like they do now with the same amount of work for them less work for you and us Because the whole form one Well, are we required I was gonna say the form one.

That's the State Board of Accounts That's what I mean if you turn that digital

sheet into like a form one.

A form one.

And I'm sure Ed can do that. So we can digitally send it out.

Is there a digital form one available from the state that they've already put together? Not to my knowledge.

Okay, so let's look at that. Ed can do that. Ed has offered previously Excel classes to the department heads and others. This moves us towards ground zero saying, okay, we're going digital. And if you haven't come to the classes you better catch up real quick because that's how we're going which is good Which means we are taking control of the finances and saying we're moving in our direction Yeah, there's no formula entry here.

It's literally I'll make a motion that Scott does it all

I second. I second. All in favor, deny.

Denied? No, I said aye.

No problem.

She said denied. I'm like, what?

We can take a form. We can make it a Google form. All right. All right. It's a minute. We're going to have to take a 10-minute break. That's what we're doing. It's a lot. Yeah. We're going to do that. 10 minutes. Yeah. You know, the value of the young deputies, as you can tell in If you ever get stopped as a council person, you'll see you have to be vested for five years to stop the council person. All right.

And with that.

Jim.

What?

We're done. I just wanted to throw this out there. I like your boss. I know. I'm glad you finally figured that shit out, too, Jim.

I don't want you to know. I want you to know. Before you said that, I said, here I am. There's six of you. Y'all can do whatever you want to do. I don't care. I don't have anything to hide from the public. I'm the one person with a voice. That's it. That's right. Okay, and you have a voice, so use it. I do. I know.

But what I'm going to throw at you is the average wage in Indiana, private sector, average, loose.

you

This is just an update. Just an update. I'd really like to get this resolved by the end of June if at all possible. I got with Mike Moore, Dave Fencemeyer, Brad Stocksdale, everybody over there last Wednesday. Okay? And to make it simple, we had the Dodge Caravan, we had the Ford Explorer.

And that's the Durango.

Long and short of it is that cot that they got, which is really cool. I didn't know they had that thing. And you push a button and the wheels drop down automatically. It's really cool. Will not fit in the Explorer. Period. Okay. Ain't gonna work.

Okay.

Okay. So the minute we tried to put that cot in there, I went, nope, that's a bad idea. That ain't gonna work. So then I immediately said, okay, wait a minute. I looked at Mike, okay, and Dave, and to get a four-wheel, and I'm assuming that if we're going to do this, do it right or don't do it, okay, is we need a four-wheel drive vehicle because of where they may have to go and when. All right. The best vehicle that they would prefer is a Suburban. Okay? So... So I went on, I got ahold of John Jones, which is where Brad buys all his vehicles down in Salem. They sent me a quote for, it's the LT Suburban, which is the four-wheel drive standard.

$74,000 approximately, right?

So then I got online and I found some dealer in Ohio that's got one. He was at 72. So now, right now, I've got a dealer up in Monticello, Indiana, a small Hubbard Chevrolet, and they're working on a quote, okay? Now, what's interesting with the used car market is, have you guys heard of Carvana? Oh, yeah.

Yes.

Carvana, they bought, they own an auction company by the name of Odessa. And Odessa historically has been used with all the rental car companies. So the rental car companies buy their car inventory direct from the manufacturers, they put them in service, put X amount of miles on them, and then from there they go to Odessa. The secondary market. The secondary market. And then the dealers can come in and buy those rental vehicles. Well, Carvana bought Odessa. And I guess the word has it, Carvana, because they got billions of dollars, they're literally going up and buying up all the used inventory.