County Council - Regular Meeting

Check one, two, check one, two.

Hello. Hello. Seems like we just did this. I know.

All right, we told Helmsburg RSD to come back and update us on what they learned from the commissioners.

We received your guys' request for all the financial information along with the plans that you requested.

I believe we've gotten all that to you. I haven't heard anything back from anybody, so I'm assuming everybody was able to access it and get what they needed. If there's any other questions in regards to that, happy to answer. We did attend the commissioner's meeting yesterday. So what? They did unanimously vote to agree to transfer the basic $175,000 from the sock factory money to us. today for you guys just to see what else you needed and answer any questions and go forward from there questions anyone concerns questions thoughts yeah i got a bunch but i'm not gonna bring them up okay

Anything from anyone?

So if they approve it, what's the next step for him to get it?

Whoa, whoa, whoa. First of all, the commissioners don't have the authority to do an appropriation. That is the council's responsibility.

That's what I'm asking.

We as a council body have to make a motion, make a second, and approve. Got to be advertised first. I'm just going to say this and then I'm done. If we were talking about allocating $175,000 out of with taxpayer funds, so vis-a-vis the general fund, I wouldn't approve it. Okay. However, because this is a gift from... It's just simple.

It's kind of the same mindset. It came from Helmsburg.

If it was taxpayer money, I wouldn't approve it all. There's no way. The other concern I have over this, you all got to remember that I go back years and so I'm all too familiar the whole regional sewer district thing and you know that to me you know we've also got NABON and NABON's got their own issues yeah so we can't you know we as the council and you know commissioners you know to me Herrietta Weddle, which I think she gifted the land, the real estate, to build that plant on.

The original, yes.

The original plant 25, 30 years ago.

And we purchased additional land from them.

Yeah, so, and Herrietta Weddle, you know, we ought to have a monument. for her, to be honest with you, because she was there for the whole time. And I think she did a fantastic job managing payables and receivables, kind of the day-to-day operations, right? But I think looking in the rearview mirror, the council and the commissioners both had been somewhat negligent in that the county has not paid attention to and or really offered any support for our regional sewer districts, because the challenge with it, as I see it, is we can appoint board members all day long, but now you get into what skill sets do those individuals have, you know, what skill sets would I have to how to manage a regional sewer district? You know, I don't know anything about a regional sewer district. You know, poop goes in and water comes out. That's about, right? And you pay the bills. You pay the bills, yeah, right. So, you know, so, to me, this you know, the council and commissioners, you know, we need to, you know, do a better job of being involved and knowing what's going on to offer our support, right? And I say that because, you know, since 2017, you know, I have, and you all have heard it, it's a revolving cycle, same conversation over and over again. It's, you know, affordable housing, economic development, you know, comprehensive planning. And, you know, at the end of the day, if you don't have can't address that issue.

I will say, too, I know Adrian O'Shea, the president on Holmesburg's Super Board, has been having conversations with, I'm sorry, I spaced the gentleman's name over at Naubonex. They've been just kind of trading back, I think, text messages and emails and that kind of stuff. So we've even told them, it's like, if you guys are in need of help or assistance or whatever, or even just kind of some guidance as, as we've been going through this process on anything that you're doing, by all means, let us know. We're happy to share any and all the knowledge that we've got, you know, on our side or, you know, give you pointers to say, Hey, you should go talk to these people or you should suggest this and that kind of stuff.

So, I mean, yeah, my experience, my experience, but you know, if, if, To me, let's look at 2050. 2050 is going to look a lot different than what it looks like today, sorry to say. Hopefully good, I don't know. We'll see what happens. But what I will say is that the youngest baby boomer was born in 1964 and 2050 the youngest baby boomer will be 86 years old. So the real estate, there's going to be a lot of real estate that's going to transfer ownership over the next 24 years. Don't know how much, right? But the, and this is just an observation, not a criticism, not a judgment. But, you know, I wish we all, the leadership within the county, you know, you guys, the regional sewer demonstration, the leadership is, we've got to start thinking in terms of 2050, right? We've got to start working together. We've got to move away from this tribal, I call it tribalism, this is mine, you stay away, this is mine. And we've got to start thinking in terms of how do we collectively and get very clear about what we're solving for and when I say that meaning that that you know it's like the water we had our budget hearings last week and you know and I don't know how many homes we've got in the county that don't have water right but when I think of this subject I think in terms of Brown County water and it'd be nice if we had a Brown County utility company that was specifically focused on all of the wastewater treatment plants okay Because the challenge with it, and this is where you guys are running into it, is you don't have an economy of scale. You've only got, what, 64 customers? Is it 62? You've got another 10, now you're 72. And you don't have enough people on there to divide that cost out, to drop that cost out. And so the challenge with that is to try and find the funding and how do you increase that membership to drive that cost down to get to an economy of scale. And then the other challenge with it is that then you get into the day-to-day maintenance and operations of that facility, and I'm assuming you guys have got a contract out. to find outside service vendors that can come in and do the things that need to be done to maintain those systems. Because the board members, I hope, are not doing it themselves.

No, we actually, Robin Willie, who's full-time Nashville, he is our part-time operator for the plant.

Okay, so there is some collaboration between Nashville.

Kind of. We have a separate contract with Robin for that services. But then if it involves anything excavation-wise or anything like that, then Robin has kind of a a pool of people that he uses here in Nashville that he can say, hey, we need to dig up this line. Can you come out and help me do it?

But if we're thinking in terms of the next 5, 7, 10, 15 years ahead, I've said this over and over again, that it would really be nice if we had one wastewater treatment utility company that legally own all the wastewater treatment plants so that we can work together to try to figure out how to put the infrastructure in that's needed in order to If the county wants to add additional housing, then you're going to have, sorry, but you're going to have to go to small sub-developments. And you can't do that if we don't have that infrastructure. We don't have, and everybody says this, we'll have the real estates owned by the government and not-for-profits, which is partly true. So you've got a finite amount of real estate. And until we have that infrastructure in, it's going to be very difficult to increase any capacity, and especially on the economic development side, because there's no way in the world you're going to get somebody to come in and drop $100 million in bean blossom to build a plant, a manufacturing facility. That ain't going to happen. I doubt if we even have the baseline power to do it if somebody wanted to do it. So going forward, we all need to roll our sleeves up Go to 2050, back up to where we are, and work together to figure out what we need to do to where it's a win-win.

And as a county, we're going to have to engage. some kind of growth strategic. Right. And I agree with a lot of the criticisms of the growth. It's like, you know, we're Brown County. We don't want to grow Brown County and turn it into Johnson County.

Yeah, but we're never going to be that.

Right. But there are strategic locations. Helmsburg is one. It may blossom. It will.

established communities and they were booming and thriving at one time and since then they've fallen off so now it's redeveloping them is on the back side of my property on the back side because i'm not but maybe five miles from lutheran lake and i'm like two and a half miles from bartholomew county four miles from jackson county and it's the uh when you gary road And Garrity Road is a gravel road currently.

Remote.

You know, if you've been on it. Very remote. Yeah. Yeah. But here's the thing. There's also, there's Garrity Road. And then Garrity Road, when you get on that to go to Waymansville, as soon as you get to Bartholomew County, it turns into Blacktop. Okay. And there's a bunch of real estate over there that you could build. I mean, you could put a lot of homes on it. All right. Now. To do that, though, you're going to have to have the infrastructure in that road, but it's all sitting in Brown County, so it's in the Brown County tax base. Furthermore, there is another road that's actually one of my favorite roads. I'm sitting here and my mind's weird. motorcycle road, but that's in Bartholomew County and a developer's come in and they bought up all the real estate and they're putting in a bunch of high dollar homes. I mean it's a cool road, right? I can't think of the name that comes to it. So we have opportunities in the county to add housing, but I think it's going to have to be strategic. In your area over there, I'm assuming that most of the people that live in that northwest Jackson township area, I'm going to assume they either work up in Indy, they work in Martinsville, or they work in Bloomington.

I'd say a majority of them, yeah. Okay. I mean, I'm up in that area, but I mean, and I work here remotely.

So we have an opportunity that we could add residential housing, right, which will help with the schools, which will help with the tax base, right? We don't have the capacity to add thousands of homes.

Right.

But we can add some housing to help support Bloomington, Martinsville, right? Because not everybody wants to live in Johnson County, right? They would like to live here. But the challenge that we're faced with now, the way I understand it, I mean, I just was told by a realtor recently this week that if you want to buy five acres, as long as it's not on a ravine or ridge trail that's got some road frontage, you're $100,000 for five acres right now.

Yeah.

So, you know, so this subject's extremely important for, you know, the county, but all of us are going to have to really pull our heads, put our heads together and use some creative critical thinking and really try to figure out how to So that's where I'm coming from. I'm saying, okay, fine. Because the only thing I will add, and not to come in here and take up a bunch of time, but one of the concerns I have, and we don't need to address it today, but I think you guys said 14,000 gallons is the daily flow on this new Yeah, because you add these 10, that's going to put you at 72 or 74? 74. Okay, so just let me, bear with me here. If we take, if I take, you said 74? Yes. 74 homes use 4,000 gallons of flow a month, average. Some are going to be five, some could be six.

So right now, currently, with the 64 homes that we have on there, our average daily flow through the plant is between 6,000 and 7,000 gallons a day. So we're basically utilizing about 50% of the capacity of this proposed plant that's going in.

so adding in those 10 others we figured we're going to be between the seven to eight thousand dollar range our seven to eight thousand gallon per day range so that's about three thousand and a half fifty three thousand per month which i think is a little low but yeah i'd have to go to the water and that's based on your actual flow yeah but i have to go yeah can you manage do you have a way to track the out of the house flow of each house uh each house no um but we have uh

a flow meter on the influent end of our treatment plant. Well, the proposed one will have one on the influent end, and we also have one on the outlet end, basically, that we have to report to IDENT. I got it. During the engineering, that question came up because our engineers are like, you should be seeing a lot more flow than that. And it's like, well, no, that's what we're seeing that's going out of the plant. So we actually put a temporary meter on the influent end of our plant And when they were running that meter, I think they ran it for a couple of weeks or a month, and it came back showing that it matched basically our outflow, which was that $67,000.

So you've got that flow documented.

Yeah, okay. I mean, now, I mean, our outflows are recorded daily. Okay. Robin's got it set up out there, and he has to record that information daily and report it to IDEM as part of our permitting.

I've got a stupid question. Sure.

There's no stupid question.

Could I drink the water coming out of that plant? What a stupid question. You must try one of these. Give yourself a bite for sake of change. You could.

I don't know that I'd recommend it.

I don't know how clean that water is coming out of it.

I mean, we have limits because we also have to do sampling of that effluent weekly. And Robin takes those samples once a week. They get sent off to Element Labs over in Columbus, and they record that information or they send us back the data, and we have to submit that data back to IDEM again. Because IDEM, even with our discharge permit, they're looking at those numbers, and we have to be at certain numbers, you know, certain testing levels and under. And if we exceed them, then IDEM is going to come and say, hey, what's going on? Why are you above that one? Right. You know? It does occasionally happen. Something funky goes with the plan or whatever, one of our numbers might spike a little bit, and then Robin's immediately out there trying to figure out, okay, make a few tweaks, adjustments, whatever, and get things going again. So, I mean, it doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen, and that's a normal thing for any wastewater plant. You know, bigger plants like even Nashville, they're actually taking those samplings even more often, like daily. know or a couple of times a day depending on what the sample is just to make sure that their plants running and operating you know within that range so that when they do submit those things to item that they're not going to get hit with that yeah because you know one of the things that we we being council commissioners uh scott you know what is it two years ago the whole

economic development area, Melissa sent out an email with Monroe, Brown, and that three-county district. Initially, you know, and I'm still guarded with it because I want to see the agreement before we ever make a decision to do that. But on the flip side of the coin, you know, I think I've heard you here, and I could be wrong, but if we were to move forward with that, that it could potentially lead to, because what we probably ought to be doing for, you know, Nashville, for our three regional sewer districts, Wouldn't it be smart if we started hunting for federal money, trying to raise capital?

You're right.

Because we need a lot of money.

And that's where my brain goes.

I'd love to see $100 million come in here for this and say, here's $100 million.

That's where my mind goes for this. And the district, you're right, can go towards sewer investments and large sewer investments. So if you wanted to include Bean Blossom as an example. And there were business creations or jobs sustained or created as a part of that, which I can't imagine there wouldn't be in Bean Blossom. It's a major limitation in Bean Blossom. And so it would open the door to... sewer money like you would actually need to tackle a very difficult project like Bean Blossom. That's not a cheap project, right? It's millions, not hundreds of thousands. And so I think from an economic development perspective, it's the way we should be thinking about our sewer districts, the project-by-project stuff. Like the 10 connections you're bringing us today, I don't see it as economic development. In fact, there's a couple of those properties that I think are actually – it's the opposite of economic development. We can get to that later. But I see the value in what you're doing as, you know, one, you're just helping people live. Even if it is a high monthly rate, they're able to stay in their homes there. But I think the challenge you're asking for help with is to help you sustain your rates and your operation and help you grow. And I'm interested in helping with that. And like Jim, if this were tax money... I'd say there's just no way we can justify this. It is donor money, and I don't like this pool of funding, quite frankly, but it is intended to support Helmsburg, and so I'm okay with coming up with an investment there, an investment. that will help you reach the goal of sustaining your rates that will benefit all of your customers i'm not interested in benefiting a very small number of customers and i'll get to why those specific area i'm not interested in But I think we should be making a wise investment in all of your customers. And my idea for that would be not these 10 connections, but rather you mentioned that you were going to cut the automation controls in your plant. because you're down $700,000 from your grant. Really, my main concern is the plant, and yours too, right? It's not expansion, bean blossom. Hey, that's years down the road. Who knows if that's your plan in keeping that thing viable.

Your plan is the first step in that. You can't do anything without that.

I agree. I heard you say cut the automation controls as part of that $700,000 potentially. Having some experience in that, that is an investment I would be interested in making with that 175. I don't know if that's what the total would be. Here's why. One, it would benefit all your customers. Two, if the goal is to sustain rates and keep your operation efficient. That automation capability, when you have your manager lives on the other side of the county in a very remote area from that person's home or a, you know, Nalbone uses Bynum Faneo out of Bloomington. Your plant can be remotely operated, greatly reducing your labor costs forever. This isn't a one-time 10-person benefit. It's an every-customer, district-wide cost savings. That I'm interested in. I think it's a wise investment. I just want to touch on...

That doesn't even touch that.

Well, hang on. In response to that, when we were looking at cutting, when I said cutting automations, it was really from the standpoint of because the original design of this treatment plant was a 100,000 gallon per day plant. Okay? Because at the time, we were doing that, and that was taking on bean blossom immediately. And during all that process, when they were running our financial numbers and everything else, Our rates were still in the 90s, okay, across the board. We ran into the issue when we had our meeting with SRF in December. So where our portion for Helmsburg was plant and obviously we were working in coordination with Brown County RSD. Brown County RSD was then focusing on the collections and trying to get collections and customers from the Bean Blossom area. When we met in December, SRF was looking for timeframe updates from both sides. We had basically bid ready plans ready to go for 100,000 gallon per day plant. Brown County was a little bit behind on their time schedule. At that point in time, they had plans for their main line. They didn't have easements done yet, is what they had reported to SRF. So SRF took that as, okay, well, you're now a little bit more behind than where we thought you were gonna be. They were saying Helmsburg desperately needs a plant. So we're going to downsize the plant that we're going to fund for Helmsburg for now. It's still expandable to that 100,000 and even actually more. But we're going to downsize it to this. And then that's when they also cut our funding from, it was at the time, they were going to give us $7.8 million in forgivable loan and all that. And they cut it down to 6.4 by downsizing the plant. It's from 100,000 to the 14,000 gallons.

So it only dropped how much?

A little less than a million dollars. So it went from 7.8 to 6.4.

But it went from 100,000 to 14,000? Well, because your main control and treatment stuff is still being installed.

We were building a brand new plant from the ground up. So that happened at that point in time. When we bid this out and our bids came in higher and then SOS said, we're capping you at that 6.4, we're not giving you anything more than that unless you wanted to take it at a loan.

You came in at 700 above the 6.4. So you came in at... Yes. At least construction costs.

Adding everything in, we were trying to cut... about $1.7 million off of the overall project cost. The biggest cut that we're making right now is we had a blower and sludge building that was going to be built, a CMU block building. The only part of that building that was really going to be used right now for this current plant for 14,000 gallon per day plant was an electrical room. The rest was for when we do the next phasing, then we're going to put in the sludge processing, blowers, you know, we're going to be housed in that building now, but it's only going to be one or two of them and that kind of thing. we were able to almost shave off a million dollars of that cost by just removing that building. And now the blowers are gonna be in external housings, but they're gonna be sitting outside on a concrete pad. Our control panels are gonna be in waterproof, stainless steel panels that'll be positioned outside the plant rather than them being inside of a room or inside of a building. So that was the biggest cost savings that they took off of that. Then we just started looking from the standpoint of it's like, okay, when we made that cut back in December from 100,000 gallons a day to 14,000 gallons per day, we were still trying to leave as much in there to accommodate that 100,000, figuring that's gonna be the next phase project we're gonna be shooting for in the very near future, so how much of that infrastructure can we leave in there so when we do that future phase, it's plug and play, it's easy to go. So that's the stuff they started looking at and saying, okay, well, if we're only accommodating for 14,000, we really don't need this right now, so we can cut that portion out for the moment just to get us to what we need for the 14,000. When it came to automations and controls, I was very adamant with our Engineering firm and I said you are not going to make this more difficult for operator run like he still at least needs bare minimum of He's gonna get his alarms, you know, there's an issue going on at the plant. He can get an alarm that says hey, there's a problem I said if he can keep that automation to where he can do that stuff remotely as like that's Amazing because like you said that's gonna save us even in the long run, you know because if Robin report like his normal Visits that he makes out is one monthly price that we pay him. If he makes calls out for alarms at houses or whatever or any of that kind of stuff, he charges us an hourly rate for him to be out there and making those repairs. He's very reasonable with his rates because he knows we can't afford the moon. So he's very conscious of that kind of stuff for us. But keeping that automation to where if an alarm goes off and he can pull it up on his computer to see what's going on. and right there make a quick adjustment from home versus having to drive, like you said, from the southern part of the county all the way up there.

Well, you're lucky to have him, and so that's a highly experienced person. Yes. So I guess, did you cut automation or not?

No, no. We scaled it back a little bit, but not to the point to where it's going to constrain him from being able to run and operate that plant, even from the standpoint of being remotely.

When you say scaled it back, what does that mean?

We probably removed a couple of not 100% necessary alarm processes, but we kept the main ones in place that he was going to need to know right off the bat and to be able to operate the plant remotely.

I guess that was my question. Yes. There's multiple capabilities there, but you want to be able to be alarmed and notified and to be able to control pumps, blowers. You may need some treatment, I think. And so I guess, was there nothing cut that would improve efficiency long term? Do you know what you cut?

I don't know the specifics on it. And actually, Robin and I and our engineers are still supposed to sit down and have a

a phone call or a conversation to go over those details as to what do we have to have in place versus... And so I think that's where I would be interested because there's have to have and then there's things that would improve your efficiency, and that's what we're trying to... And so if we skip to the reason why I'm concerned and not in support of the 10 customers is I looked at the map you provided... And I'm seeing, I didn't expect what I found. It looks like only a few homeowners are included that actually live in their homes. And the rest are all businesses, investors, tourist homes, and people that I would consider far from needing support. And some of them don't even live here. And one of the properties, the one I mentioned before, that is, I think, the opposite of economic development, I think was identified by the Redevelopment Commission as a prime housing development site that's like 40 acres all around the school. It's flat. It's open. It's prime for redevelopment. Residential the county back of the day. I think Jim you may even been on that you probably know the property I'm talking about there's a lot of interest in that and it was One of the few properties in the county that was next to sewer Next to a school next to grow good roads and water and power and fiber that were viable Development sites and this is one of those properties. It's not that it matters, but it's owned by an out-of-county person They don't live there And looking more into it, it sounds like they're building a large horse barn. They're planning to build their home on it. And eventually maybe build a very large home on it, this 40-acre property. But I guess, you know, and I think I heard you say that that is the most expensive connection we're going to pay for, being asked to pay for it.

No, I think the ones that are more expensive is there's two south along – Helmsburg Road that's sitting back up off the road.

Yeah, one of those is a tourist home. And there's actually two tourist homes on that south side. And I just can't support that, especially with those funds. I know there are a lot of people in this county that need water connections, that need sewer or septic support, that are actually in need. When I look at the homeowners, no many of them, great people. They probably don't even know you're asking for public money for these connections, if I were to guess. These are not the typical things that a trustee, for example, would even come close to touching in terms of needy. And so I did see a couple others that didn't look like they had easements across their properties either. And I thought I heard you say.

I have a stack of. They're signed that I still need to bring down here and get recorded.

Oh, I meant like the main didn't even cross their property. And yeah, I thought you said they were doing it for free because they gave easements across their property.

They signed at least the easement for us to put the station on their property. There are some that are on the opposite side of the road from our main, but they're the ones that wanted to be hooked on. that signed an easement in order for us to install the grinder and maintain and operate the grinder station into the line getting to the main.

Yeah, one of those was a tourist home by a Carmel owner. And I just, they didn't give a main easement. I don't know why we would fund a sewer connection to a tourist home from a, not that it matters, but these are, they don't live there. This is a business. It's generating probably significant cash. Like they didn't provide the water main, the sewer main easement, which I just don't, there's a lot of that that, again, many of these owners, in fact, the vast majority of them, these are not needy situations that we have. probably dozens and dozens and dozens of actual intense needs from people who have no other options and no means that are living here with families And those are the ones I think we should be focusing those dollars on. So those are my concerns. But I do want to support the district. It's critical what you do. This economic development district is one way where lots of money, the kind of money you're talking about to connect Bean Blossom, we can't fund. This is it. This is pretty much it. This is the last of it. There's no more money available for Helmsburg just sitting in pools of money. This is it. And so I think we've got to make a count and make a very good investment here And it needs to, from my perspective, benefit all of those customers, probably not this subset. The other thing I noticed was I think this isn't the same Superman that we already funded a few years ago, is it?

The ARPA funds, are you talking about that?

I don't know. I don't recall which funding we used, but you asked us three, four years ago to fund six customer connections, and we agreed to do that. Is this the same project or a different project?

I'm not recalling that one. I know with ARPA funds we had, had allocated $350,000 of ARPA funds to us.

The council authorized that?

I think that all was from commissioners and council. Yes, it all came from Brown County.

I think all of the ARPA funds were commissioner discretion. I think we had to have a plan that the council approved.

And those ARPA funds, so the $350,000 that we were given of ARPA funds, we used that money, one, to do our preliminary engineering report for the treatment plant, That was completed with those funds. We used it to at least get the engineering going for the treatment plant until we were able to get a forgivable loan from SRF to basically take over the rest of that design. We also used it to purchase the additional land next to our existing plant to build this new plant on. And then we've used it, some of the money towards Over the years since we've had it, some grinder stations and stuff like that in our existing collection system have gone out. So we needed to buy new grinders or whatever it might be or do the upgrades on those, which we didn't have the funds in our general account. So we were using that money to kind of improve that infrastructure. We did extend our silver main to the west along the highway to Lick Creek. to accommodate one additional home right there in the corner of the creek and the highway. We also extended the main to the east along the highway to get to a property just west of Holmesburg School Road and hook them on. We did use some of the money to put those mains in to the south and to the north.

The ones we're being asked to. Correct. So the money the council approved was used to install the mains.

Of that money right now, we have a little over $48,000 of it left that we have in a separate what we call our grant bank account, separate checking account, which is a grant account that we have. Our plan is to kind of hold on to that as a safety net for this upcoming rebid of the treatment plan so that that way if there is any overages or something like that, we can say, okay, well, we have this safety net. here that we could use to try to put towards that so that that way we can get this plant moving forward and even kind of hold onto it while that's under construction in case a change order comes up or something of that nature that involves a little bit more money to be able to make that happen still or adjust that issue, then we've got that as that safety net. So then this ask for this $175,000, like I say, is to add on those 10 customers. And in reality, and I understand what you're saying too, some of them are business and tourist homes and that. But without adding those 10 customers on, we honestly have to reevaluate what our sewer rates are. Because our rate study and everything that was done back in May, prior to the initial bid of the treatment plant, was including that those 10 customers were going to be hooked up because it was part of that original project. So factoring all that in, that's where we came up with having to raise that rate to that 118 at that time. But if we don't add those 10, then in all reality, we're going to have a little bit of a shortfall on our rates going forward unless we can figure out where those 10 come from.

And the 10 are in the $700,000 shortfall.

Yes.

That's directly related to those 10 connections? That's where the overage was?

Well, that was one of the things that we pulled out of that treatment plant design, or, you know, was those hookups. We pulled out of that to try to get that number down to SRF's, you know, $6.4 million for your full loan.

I guess my question is, your estimate for connecting those 10 homes, was it over, under, or on point?

Um... We had only, at the time we had only budgeted for purchasing the equipment and we just had an allowance basically in the contract for the contractor and said, you're going to give us an allowance of this much to hook on these 10 homes. And we weren't really even putting it on that contractor to do those installs. We were going to... basically bid that out to more local installers or more local companies that we already use to do that work versus using the big contractor that's focused on the treatment. Was it not in the bid then? It was in the bid as an allowance.

It's really an exercise in futility to talk about it because the fungibility of the money that's there, it's fungible. We can say we're not going to fund this but we'll fund part of the plant. Well, what's going to happen is then that's going to free up money from the plant to be used to pay for this. This is going to get done anyway, no matter where we put the money. And where we put the money, the $175 you asked me for, wherever we put it, it's going to mean they're going to have to spend the money on this. So they're going to do this no matter what. What's going to happen is that money is going to come out of what they have available for the plant which is then possibly going to reduce further some of the automation that you're concerned about. It's all the same pot of money that's taking away from itself. If we sit there and start... debating over who's worthy of being hooked up to their system, then we're going far beyond our job to do that in micromanaging what they're doing.

I would support homeowners if they're on there.

I would fund those, but the rest of the businesses, I can't fund.

I just want to say this. Appreciate the conversation. It's been going on for 45 minutes. You know, these type of conversations, you know, if I have, I have a lot of questions, but I'm not going to waste our time during a public meeting, okay, to try to get all the, to ask all the questions. What I'll do is I'll call you and schedule probably a three-hour one-on-one.

A lot of five-hour.

Or perhaps I'll start coming to all your monthly Helmsburg regional sewer district meetings, right? So because if you're going to get down into the weeds and start talking about all the stuff that's involved, that needs to be, you know, so appreciate your questions, appreciate your concerns. But to me, it's real simple. We have to make a decision as to whether or not we're going to appropriate $175,000 out of that sock factory fund. That's the decision we have to make.

And I will say, too, just in regards to what you're asking as well, our plan is that if there is anything left over of that $175,000 that you allocate to us after we put down those homes, we're using that remaining money to work ahead on the... grinders pumps that are already in our collection system at properties that are way past their, you know, their prime. We still have some that are still original from when they were installed in 1996 and thankfully are still working and still functioning. But our plan would be that, you know, whatever's left over on it, be able to allocate towards saying, okay, These 10 or these ones here are very old pumps. Let's go ahead and let's replace them now.

I guess I would just say if you're asking for more than you need, you should reduce your request.

Right now, at least based on the numbers that our engineers and everything have given us to hook on those 10 homes, that's the amount we've come up with.

Could you send that to us so we can see what that is? Sure.

I mean, we've got Parks and Rec, CVC conversation, and we also have not addressed the 2027 salary ordinance, the factory evaluation system. Julie, you have to publicly publicize the budget on the 17th of August. that's fast approaching, and we've not addressed that issue. So, you know, are we going to make a decision? Are you going to put this on the agenda for the August meeting to make a decision?

Well, it's up to us. Are we ready to do that?

Yeah, I don't see why we need to. They need to make, let's get a decision and make a decision. This is not rocket science.

Anybody opposed to putting that on the agenda? No.

Let's stick it on the agenda for our regular meeting, which is the third Thursday. I don't know the date.

I'll get it advertised.

17th yeah, yeah, yeah, and so can we get it advertised and we make a decision and so you guys can do what you want to do Just general to someone talk about early the problem County as we tend to be localized tribal thinking and it's expanding beyond that we need to learn to work together and countywide And that's not being that's just right.

Yeah, I look at this You got you know that my understanding is you know, the town of Nashville is part of Brown County They've got water line issues, in my understanding. They've probably got wastewater issues as well. We've got Brown County water that's not providing service to everybody in the county. We've got Knobone, we've got Helmsburg, and we've got Bean Blossom. You know, and I bet if you add it all up, they're probably a couple hundred million dollars.

And if we ever got, like, if we ever got, like, a fire district, we could have much more effective fire. That's another issue. An EMT. Right. How do you get all those people to work together? How do you put all that together? Right.

That is, and it, yeah. And that's the reason I continue, because when I advocate, you know, Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective Living. Be proactive, which is to take responsibility for our decisions on a daily basis. Begin with the end in mind. So the end in mind, let's go to 2050. It's 24 years, all right? And then first things first. So where are we right now? Where do we want to go? What do we want this county to look like, okay? And for God's sakes, you know, I look at Facebook, I see all these people, you know, promoting all the Hoosier National Forest, Lake Lemon, and the environmental aspect of it. Well, now you get, if you're going to talk about how beautiful the environment is, then I think there is room for improvement for us as a county to be better stewards of the environment. So land, water, air, right? So instead of fighting one another and constantly bickering and getting in the weeds, and then, you know, and the other thing, too, is to me, we all need to learn how to do it. When I think of the word argument, I think I define the word argument in a legal context. Right. Okay? An argument is not domestic violence. Yeah, you can have an argument in domestic violence, right? But publicly, we have to have good arguments so that we can discuss it, work through it, and go for win-win. This win-lose thing, which to me over the last 17 years, If everybody backs in the corner and if there's a disagreement, then it gets personal. Everybody's making it personal. And we're going for win-lose. So I'm going to argue with you. I will argue with Scott. Instead of you've got your perspective, I've got mine, and let's come up with something that's going to work for all of us. And we've got to do a better job. We can improve. I agree. It's at 530 by the way. What else we got? Well, we've got this APC. They're going to have a meeting and we've got the Parks and Rec, right? And we've got to make a decision on that. All right, and you sent out an email to Susan Beavers. Did you ever get anything back from Susan Beavers? No. So she's not responding? No. Okay.

And the question was, you know, would the CBC request that we get them a legal memo from Susan saying, hey, you know, the Parks and Rec for this tourism-related issue is legal according to her, and that would be... And let's just real quickly, because you sent out, I sent out a statement that just stated that the Parks and Rec is a government department.

Yeah. Period. End of story. It's not an un-for-profit. Okay. Just trying to here's what it is what it is. Okay now Bear with me on this What we're saw what we're solving for is based off the quality of life group and And the document Brian Tadlock sent to me for the CVC, because I don't think the CVC has ever created a quote-unquote governing document yet. Okay, they're still void there.

I think they did.

But I got a document. Hang on a minute. I don't think. I think they did. We can check. Two, you know, we as a council body, if you're going to create a governing document, I think the proper approach would be for the county council to take that document. turn it into an ordinance, and have it approved as an ordinance, and then get it recorded in the recorder's office, okay? So the CBC would have to vote on it. It would come before the council. The council would turn it into an ordinance. We would vote on it, and then we'd get it recorded. Therefore, it's legal.

I think they did send out something they voted on.

So based off the document that I got from Brian Tadlock, you know, there needs to be more discussion about that document, all right? But in that document, my main takeaway was Pretty bland if it's a quote-unquote not-for-profit. But you've got to keep in mind there are like 29 different not-for-profits with the IRS. And there's all sorts of different not-for-profits. Now, the issue what we're solving for is a year ago, the council, you all made a decision to take the entire Parks and Rec budget move it out of the general fund, and move it into the CVC fund. We passed the budget in October, and then after that, Julie Reeves and Teresa Cobian got on the phone, called the State Board of Accounts, and you guys pushed back extremely hard. You all pushed back, said you cannot do that, all right? And then what did the council do? We turned right around, took the Parks and Rec budget out of the CVC fund and stuck it back into the general fund, did we not? So that's the truth, that's the fact batter, fair? All right, so this year, now we've got a Parks and Rec budget with a bunch of capital outlays in it. And what Parks and Rec has done is they've gone in and allocated a certain percentage to those line items and making the claim that those percentages are contributed to tourism. So the issue is whether or not, what legal standing do we have in order to be able to take that portions of those percentages and those line items because the auditor's office is going to have to go over and take those line items, create them inside the CVC fund and pay those percentages out of the CVC fund because it is illegal Your non-compliance with statute to go in and take $150,000 out of the CVC and appropriate that money over into a GVC. You cannot do that. You cannot do that. Any disbursements out of the CVC fund have to be out of a line item. Period. Period. So you've got $2 million coming into the CVC fund. And it makes sense if you stop and think about it. You've got $2 million being receded into the CVC fund. any disbursements outside to anyone needs to be a separate line item because now you have a complete audit trail of where that money's gone to and what they will what they will not allow you to do is you cannot go into that cvc and you can now you can take at a line item a million three goes to the cvb you can do that Okay, so now the million three goes to the CUB. They can do pretty much whatever they want to do with that million three. But what you cannot do is we cannot go in the issue issue is in order to be able to fund the line items within parks and rec would we require Julie to go into the CBC fund and for the council to approve an additional appropriation out of the CBC fund into the general fund because the parks and rec budget is all funded with general fund money period the only money that they get is the 12 grand a year coming in from that cell tower rent they got 12 grand a year coming in there so we would have to appropriate money out of the cvc fund into the general fund and then allocate that money in the general fund specifically to those line items within parks and rec and we cannot do that you're not in compliance with statute let me feed that back to you just i think i agree with you

Well, it's not me. It's state statute. Well, I agree with what you're saying. I think I agree with what you're saying. You're saying that in order to properly disperse funds out of the innkeeper's tax fund, the council needs to appropriate the funds. line items line items line items yeah expenses the cbc needs to approve those expenses and then if and the question if those dispersed expenses are allowable under the innkeeper's tax code for tourism related expenses to that entity then julie can we can disperse

You know, I don't have a problem. And keep in mind, what I'm sharing with you, I've gone and done my research because I'm not going to make a statement or a claim if I don't have something to back it up. And if I do make a subjective, superficial, anecdotal statement, I'm going to disclose it right up front. Because I professionally am a fiduciary, and during my daytime business hours, I'm very guarded with that. And I don't, just because I'm over here doesn't mean I change. You with me? Okay. At issue is, the problem with this whole subject is the State Board of Accounts. Pure and simple. You have 92 counties, you have innkeeper's tax, and the State Board of Accounts, in my professional opinion, have completely dropped the ball. Because if there are issues with the innkeeper's tax and how those disbursements are made every year within all the 92 counties, then the State Board of Accounts should have a legal document in writing that speaks specifically to prohibitive transactions. And you know what? They do not have that document. And where I take issue with that is when you call up the state, which I've done. I mean, I sat right there. I called, I think it was, I don't, I think Lori Rogers is who I spoke with. And I put her, I backed her in a corner. And I said, I want to take $800,000 and I want to pay for the ambulance services. She immediately said, well, you can't do that. You can't do that. I said, well, that's fine. Can you submit me something in writing? She goes, no. I said, do you have a document that shows lists out of the State Board of Accounts of the prohibited transactions? She goes, no. So what we're running into is we, the counties, then go to struggle with these issues. You call the State Board of Accounts And they don't have a position on it. And what you do, now you get somebody on the phone who is an employee of the State Board of Accounts making anecdotal, subjective, superficial decisions based on absolutely nothing.

Right. We're repeating a conversation.

Yeah. And it needs to be cleared up. So I got off. And then what happened was is then I submitted a document. I think I gave this to you guys several months ago. Matter of fact, I know I did. I typed up a three-page, two-page document, sent it to Eric Cook, asked Eric Cook to take my three questions, and they were very specific, and to send that to, is it the legislative association within the General Assembly? It's the group of lawyers within the General Assembly that actually write all the bills. And I said, if you could send that to them and get, I want a response. So sure enough, he gets it back to me. And this individual, and I've got their name, their phone number, their whole nine yards, this is the legal department within the General Assembly, basically stated that, because the issue is with the statute, promotion, economic development, and tourism. I mean that's what those are the three core words in that statute to promote economic development tourism and Convention and visitation. Yeah. Yeah. So so the issue see to me the issue is is How do we define those three terms and In the context of Brown County. Because we're not talking about Tiffany County, Harold Howard County. We're talking about Brown County. And everybody in the state of Indiana knows that Brown County is the place to be. Okay? What is? I mean, how many people have you got from Lafayette coming down here on weekends?

In other words, we know what tourism is.

We have to define those. It's pretty obvious. Well, yeah, but that's a hard work because here's the problem with words. As you all know, they all have different meanings. It's like the word argument. You can define it as domestic violence or you can define it in a court of law. I mean, how do you define argument? Once you define it, how do you fund it? Well, here's the process.

CBC can make direct payments to an organization. Let's take an example. CBC can make direct payments to an organization. But here's the issue.

Let's take an example of lights in the park for tournaments.

Right, right. Well, how do we fund it? Well, we can stick it in a line item in the CBC's budget, call it the light budget, and set a dollar amount to it, stick it in there, lights. That's right.

So it doesn't go through the parks, it just pays for the lights. You can do that. Same thing with pickleball courts. You can do that. All right. Now, how do we do labor?

Because he's got a certain percentage of labor, I think it's 25% of the labor cost, which is the biggest cost for Parks and Rec. How do you put, Julie, let's go back to the auditor, because now it's the auditor's problem. So if we approve 50 grand for labor for Parks and Rec, and you've got a line item in the CBC budget that says 50 grand, right, for Parks and Rec, how do you, because now you've got to pull part of the labor cost out of general fund, and you've got to pull part of that funding out of the CVC. How are you guys going to do that?

Where does revenue from the cell tower go to?

It's on fund.

I think we created a fund.

We created a fund last year specifically for that.

Is it limited? Right. Could CVC make a payment to that fund?

No, because the statute, you cannot, what they're trying, and it's a good rule.

If it specifically spells out what it's being used for.

It has to. The disbursements have to come out of a line item. You cannot take a disbursement out of the CVC fund and do an appropriation to a different fund. Because that would be an appropriation.

What you're saying is they cannot carry the budget of the Parks Department, but they can fund issues. In the line items. Correct.

Yeah.

So that's each year we would have to say CVC funds this. Correct. Tourism related. Right.

And then it gets into an accounting issue of how the auditor's office is going to do it.

But we don't fund it through the CVC. We appropriate it to CVC to make the payment. They have to approve it. We approve the line items. But it goes to CVC and they take care of all the payments.

The receipts are coming into CVC, the fund. And then all the disbursements have to be in the form of line items. So all we're going to do is approve the line items for whatever they want to do. So here's a thought.

That's it. In listening to the CDC and kind of the council discussion and the Parks and Rec, it sounds like the common ground, I'll say, is capital expenses. Kind of the least path of resistance is capital projects. You know, the staffing and labor starts to get a little messier, and I don't know that it makes sense. The problem is, it's... If we were to move staffing into the CBC's budget, it would almost look like the CBC was overseeing the staffing. I think that stays under commissioners and the parks board.

Think like an auditor. Think like you're the state board of accounts, right? Because they're a total responsibility.

I don't want to. I want you to think like a state board of account auditor.

Because at issue is I think capital outlays out of the CDC. The challenge with doing this is it's like, let me give you an example. Because what started this for me was last year when I saw the CVC budget for $1.7 million. I have no idea whether that's good or bad. I don't know if $1.3 million to the CVB is good. I don't know if it's bad. I have no idea what they're spending the money on. I have no way of knowing, okay? I have no way of knowing with the Brown County Community Foundation how they make a decision to grant money to whomever, right? What I do know is that if whatever we do, we have to document and address the why and the fact pattern and the rationale behind it. Because, let me say this, if we're going to go in and allocate money out of the CVC in a line item to cover labor costs in parks and rec, then couldn't we do the same thing for law enforcement? Is it tourism related? Sure. I can make that argument all day long. How do you make the argument, though, because I'm State Board of Counts, I'm coming in and asking you, how do you make the argument that Parks and Rec is tourism? Where's your proof? Prove it.

So let's just stick to Parks and Rec because I think that's what we're trying to solve for, right?

Prove it. Well, your argument with the law enforcement is premised on the fact that why did they put a stoplight out at the park? for safety and security and traffic control. What is law enforcement all about? That. Right. Right. And when you talk about labor, you might go broader and say maintenance. When you do a capital project, there's maintenance.

Ongoing maintenance. What are you going to do about it? Yeah, that's the part I think we've got to. But how do you substantiate?

And I'm going to say this, and then I'm finished, because I've got to bail out of here at 11 or 11.15. The, the, the, and just stay with me on this. It's kind of a wild idea. And all this is, this is just a wild idea. I'm not advocating for it. I'm not, I'm not saying we should save it.

Save it then maybe. Yeah.

We create a Brown County Parks and Rec domestic not-for-profit 501c3. And the commissioners, the commissioners, the commissioners, I think it sits on, what, 40 acres, something like that? We would have to carve out the building where the veteran service is set. The county would still own that. You literally take the entire real estate that Parks and Rec says, and you transfer the deed to the not-for-profit. Boom, you just solved your problem.

That's the same proposal I came up with a few months ago.

Right. And you turn it into a non-for-profit.

We already have the Friends of the Park, which is a not-for-profit.

I don't think so. But the commissioners own the real estate, but not the deer.

We have Friends of the Deer on. I don't believe that's true. I could be wrong, but I don't... I think what... And we talked about this in the meeting.

And that's what... I'm not saying... I don't think you have to transfer the property.

I think it just needs to go to an eligible entity. If it's Parks and Rec, it's Parks and Rec.

You don't have to because you can do a not-for-profit.

The county could do a lease back in the not-for-profit. You'd have to be in agreement between the owner of the real estate and the not-for-profit.

Let's just see what Susan says.

But that's down the road. That's not going to resolve the issue that we're confronted with currently. Susan will hopefully get back to us and we'll know then if we need to explore other options.

Based on what she comes up with legally, then we'll see. I said the same thing several months ago. If we had a not-for-profit that manage the expenses of the park. And you've got a mission and vision stage.

And it's a 501c3, so if some wealthy person wanted to donate $100,000 to that, they could do it.

Could it be a C3 or would it have to be a C4?

No, it's not political. C4 is for political subdivisions.

C3 is the one. I like the C churches. Isn't there one just for government?

When I set up Helmsburg, because I'm...

Okay, C4 is political, C3 is... Right, right, yeah.

Okay. And so when I set up the Helmsburg Community Development Corporation... We set it up, okay, because you've got to create the domestic not-for-profit with Secretary of State's office, step one, right? Then you've got to do the bylaws, you've got to do the Constitution, the bylaws, right? And then the last step is to apply for the 501c3 status through the IRS. And once they grant that, then you're good to go. To me, on the Parks and Rec, I'd want people to be able to donate money towards tax deductible, just like a church.

Yeah. Well, and that's part of what I was asking Susan in that email. Because I replied to you, 501c3 is not the definition of a not-for-profit. That's just an IRS tax category for a particular not-for-profit. That doesn't limit not-for-profits to 501c3. Something could be not-for-profit.

There are 29 different not-for-profits based on the IRS. There's 29 separate categories.

But even that, it doesn't have to be a 501c3 to be defined as a not-for-profit.

And keep in mind, step one in the whole process... is it starts with the Secretary of State's office and the Articles of Incorporation. Because in a domestic non-for-profit, forget the tax status with the IRS. In a domestic non-for-profit, for example, the Music Center and all that, you know in a domestic non-for-profit, nobody owns the corporation because you're setting up a corporation. It's a legal entity that can hold legal ownership of assets. So nobody owns that. So if the Music Center ever dissolves, That every bit of the money that comes out of that music center, the real estate, the whole nine yards, guess what? That's got to be gifted out. to probably the not-for-profits within our county. So step one is the Articles of Incorporation with the Secretary of State's office. Step two then is to create the Constitution and the bylaws. And then step three, the last step, is to apply for your tax exempt status. Because a not-for-profit, the whole key to a whole not, because I don't really like, I push back on this idea of not-for-profit. A church may be not for profit, but they have to make profit because if they don't, the church goes out of business. Okay, period.

They're not out to make a profit. They're out to collect revenue.

They don't pay federal income tax. I know that. Okay, that's the whole key.

But they're not generating profit. Yes, they are. They have to make a profit. No, they're generating revenue to cover the expenses. That's not profit. And I know you know that.

Yeah, but I'm going to push back because I'm disagreeing with your statement.

Okay.

Okay, on the definition of profit. Now we're getting into profit. I can create, for example, I'm thinking about creating a motorcyclist touring, Brown County Motorcycle Tours. That's a 501c theory.

All right?

And I'm going to come to the CVC and say, I want you to fund Brown County Motorcycle Tours, okay, which is a domestic not-for-profit. And I want the CVC to give me money so I can get it off the ground. And so people come in, we're going to take them out on tours in Brown County, okay? This is kind of a sarcastic joke. And I'm going to charge a fee to the motorcycle riders, and I'm going to collect money from the CVC because I'm going to have a couple of employees. Now, I can take in $100,000 a year and only have expenses of $50,000. Right? Okay, that's my profit. That cash that's into the bank. Now the key is, I don't have to make any taxes on that, right? So a non-profit needs to build their cash reserves just like any other business. So when I say profit, I'm just meaning your revenues exceeds your expenses. Right? Because it's any business. I don't care what business you run. It's the same, right? Because when you look at stock prices, you've got to have earnings. Earnings drives growth, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, and that's all. So I'm... Gary, you want to go on with me? I'll open up a motorcycle touring, Brown County Motorcycle Tours. Sure. Let me play CBC.

Okay, so what is the end of this conversation? What's our next step for CBC?

Well, the problem is, Julie, on the 17th of August, you have to advertise the budget.

Right, which we need to talk about soon if you have to leave.

We're not adopting it.

No, I know that. You know we need to advertise it high. We have to have a high water mark.

We'll advertise what's in their budget now, what's in Parks and Rec, but then when we adopt, we don't have to.

We can cut it, but we can't raise it.

Right.

Is that fair?

That's correct.

So we can say, hey, we're going to spend $25 million, advertise it, and what we can't do is come back and spend $30 million. We can spend $22 million. okay all right so we just you just need to advertise it high correct and so to me the parks and rec the cbc that'll flush itself out right and you know you all can do whatever you want uh but the next big issue is the labor cost issue

What I'm going to do is advertise what we have there now in the published, which doesn't take out the $100,000. It doesn't take out what you've taken out. And then we take it out before the adoption. Right.

But my concern is that what you all need to make a decision on, all right, is that report that I gave, there are six FES categories. There are 19 classifications. And in the calculations that I performed, I took the 50% external, I upped that 3% for 26, and I upped it 3% for 27. then I took 90% of that okay and what I am trying to advocate for is that two-thirds over two-thirds of the employees in this county those job positions are classified based off those 19 classifications because the only thing you got outside of that is special occupations So what I'm going to advocate for is I want to see those, you know, the 113, 115 employees, that if somebody comes in and they get hired as an LATB, and if you get 10 LATBs, those LATBs are all being compensated the same hourly wage, period. And that's what I'm trying to solve for in that. So the question is that what I don't have, Julie, and I think Kim ought to be able to produce this, is in order to be able to make that decision would be to have a complete report by department. So every department, don't care who the employee is, not at all, But what we need to look at is, by department, what are the job classifications in each of those departments? Because once we understand how many of the 150 employees, because there's approximately 150 on any given day, of those 150 employees, what are the total employees per job classification. Once we have that, then we can go in and do the calculation and make a decision. Do we go 85%? Do we go 90%? How do we true this thing up to where everybody across the board and we factor in inflation? Because if we don't factor in inflation, then you end up getting behind the wheel, right? And then what we have to do is we get done is we basically all we've got is we've got the FES job classification schedule that has the hourly rate per job classification for 2027. And then from there, it's up to the departments, their job descriptions, the three-person committee, and WIS to make a decision if that job is accurately classified, which is the key to the FES system.

But if we're going to make any change to the FES, if we're going to adjust payroll by a percentage of that, we need to have that number to advertise by the 17th, correct? Because we can't make that adjustment afterward.

Do we have to advertise the number or just put a high number in there?

That's what I'm saying. If we advertise a certain number and then we come back to revisit the FES system.

Well, we're advertising what they made this year.

Right.

That's what we're advertising. Yeah.

But then how do we bump it up? How do we bump it up? Well.

We're going to have to.

Let me ask you this. Could we go in and put $500,000, $600,000 just fluff money into the council's budget for additional labor costs for 2027?

I don't know where you put it.

And bump that number up just to get the number up. And then we know that we've got $600,000. Because see, the other part of this calculation is keep in mind the general fund, which based off the Reedy's report, again, without the lit supplemental, we were 574 in red ink for 2027. So, and keep in mind, the labor costs, the bulk of the labor costs come out of the general fund, right? So, highway and the health department, you know, I think, well, the health department's getting a little sketchy because their cash reserves, they're depleting their cash reserves. Highway department's in good shape. But then, so...

Okay, well, how about we... Three percent three percent bump For everyone was would is 170,000 Now you're the 90% on yours was 383,000 Can we just Advertise a 4% across-the-board bump in everybody that gets us close

Six. Puppet six. You can always ask for this, but you can't go up anymore. We can always bring it down.

And if we're going to... Bring everybody's pay up by 6%.

Yeah. Yeah, because you basically got $8 million in labor costs approximately, right?

But that's not going to stay. That's not going to stay because there are some people that are above the line that aren't going to get a raise. No, I understand. So we're going to have to redistribute.

He's just trying to get the money. Yeah, I know. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. The salary ordinance overrides this.

Yeah. Trying to make sure we have the money advertised so that we can make adjustments to salaries. That's $480,000.

So, yeah, do 6% across the board. It's $480,000. It's under $4. I just took $8 million times 6%, okay?

Okay. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

You can bring it back. It's just, let's... You ask for a lot, and then we can brought them back.

You're just asking for a maximum. Because this is the issue.

We've got to solve that, and we've got to solve this story problem. And you all have got to make a decision. And what I'm trying to avoid, and I'm just going to be very forthright, is what I don't want to see happen is I want us to do the work, be very thorough with the work we do, rather than we don't do anything and we don't discuss it, and then what we end up with is two or three people okay making decisions in a vacuum all right and then things get changed and we don't know what gets changed and we as a council body don't aren't very clear about what we're voting on when it comes to the salary if we're going to if we're going to make any adjustments

to salaries, once we advertise, we cannot go above that, can we?

No. So that's what I'm saying. That's why he said 6%.

Yeah, if we're going to make an adjustment to salaries, we have to be within that advertised range or we can't do it.

In our budgets, I will go and put in 6% to everyone's pay and then add that to the published budget.

Julie, do you even need to add it? Can't you just add it to the published portion, like the top? I don't think you need to go and add it to everybody's yet, especially knowing we're going to change it. I think you just have that one-page advertisement.

Yeah, just the total.

Some departments add 5% to their budget for labor. I think some did. Yeah. Treasurer did.

Somebody did. I think so. Jim, you're talking about just general fund labor? Or does she need to divide it between the MVH? Yeah. So you are going to have to divide it between what? General, MVH?

Everything. Every fund that labor costs will have to be biased.

I wouldn't go below that, you know, employee by employee.

So I just put a new line in at the bottom, adjusted pay.

And it's going to change.

You said you had a concern you needed to talk about, Julie?

Actually, it's not a concern. Gary and I are going to talk about this, aren't we, Gary?

I guess so.

Come on now. What? It's the pay program that we've decided that would be the best one.

Paycom?

Paycom.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's for HR and payroll. How much is that a year? First year, I think it's about 75. Yes. How much is it every year? It's about 40, I believe. Yeah.

And it does everything.

Yeah, it's a killer.

Well, you guys think back a year and a half ago or so. We had an individual in here, nice guy. I did several conversations with him out of the East Coast. Had a cloud-based system that could connect with WOW. And then everybody could have usernames and passwords where people could go in and be able to run all sorts of different reporting. Remember that guy?

Tom Jackson.

Is that who it is?

He's still in the business. That's procurement more so.

I understand the need. I understand the technology. I understand the value of the technology. It's not that I don't have any. I get the whole value proposition of the technology. The challenge with that technology is the county organizational structure, the skill sets of the department heads, and the ability of the county to be able to implement and maintain that system. That is my concern. Why would I go out and buy a Honda Goldwing if I've never ridden a motorcycle before? And there's probably going to be a very steep learning curve

No, I bought a Harley.

They're like a Weebles wobble. So my concern for this is how does it get implemented? Because it... The challenge, you're picking up a $75,000 expense. And again, I'm not questioning the technology. I'm not questioning the need. Clearly there's a need there.

You're questioning how we roll it out and we get people to adopt it.

And actually leverage the technology for the full value of the technology. Because if we spend $80,000 on technology, but we don't leverage it. It's like me buying that Goldwing and it's sitting in the garage and I don't ride it.

I thought about some of that, and one of the values of this high-tech program, because it will manage people and it will save us money in terms of people's comp time, overtime, double time, whatever, that aspect, not totally, but that's not the overall picture, but the fact that it moves us into the digital age, for one thing, and we've got somebody in the office there, I guess Kim is very astute at some of these newer type things to implement it, So it's like we've got some resources going towards addressing your problem. And they will come in and train us. And we're talking about them maybe doing that through the open enrollment where you really get into the nitty gritty. So that may work. It's a valid point.

And if we rule this out and say this is Brown County's operating system, this is the only way we're taking your time card is digitally.

Which would be time-saving in itself.

Yeah, I mean, that's going to enforce the rule out of it. If that's the only way we do it.

Take up the whole day's dog and pony show. Until I'm convinced, okay, that we've got all the department heads and we've got, I mean, for example, I don't even think we as a county have an organizational chart. You all know what an organizational chart is, right? You get one big thing and it says, okay, everybody's connected here, blah, blah, blah. Visual, actual organizational chart. Organizational chart's not IC code, so I don't define it. But there needs to be, we ought to have an organizational chart. This all needs to be written up in writing, documented, thoroughly thought out, okay? Every little detail before we ever think about increasing another $80,000 a year expense, okay?

Because that's a full-time position.

Well, see, that's another... Yeah, because you can talk about Kim all you want, but the problem with it is go look at her turnover. You're going to bring new technology... We couldn't even have departments fill out Excel forms instead of turning in paper form ones. So that tells me that you've got people within our... environment that may have some computer skills but you know you're going to have people that you know may not be all that familiar with technology and not used to this system so it we need i just

I'm very guarded.

First of all, I as a council member have not been included in any conversations. I did attend one, the last one.

I didn't know anything about the other ones.

So I didn't, I had no idea.

I had no idea.

I had no idea. Okay. But I have a vote and if I'm going to make a vote, then this is when I make a claim that you got you, you and Judy. All right. going to this, studying it, the PAC committee, you know, that's making decisions in a vacuum. You can't be everywhere. So... So... That's fine. There's six of you. I can vote no, and the other six can go vote yes, and you guys get what you want. So, I don't care. Whatever. I don't need to say any more. I've said enough. Please? Please, please, please. I gotta go home here in a few 30 minutes.

So where do we want to be in 30 minutes? Let's do it. That's true. We should. Make sure we're there.

What would be wrong with, you know, we've got the Parks Direct CBC, we've got the FES compensation schedule that needs to be completed, okay, so we can do the salary ordinance, so we can put in the budget, and we can pass the budget in October, okay? So, Darren, next month's meeting, all right, in September, our FES, that meeting is, to me that meeting needs to be dedicated specifically to the fes compensation schedule the work session the whole work session we don't talk about anything else we've got to implement that we've got and we've got and we have to have the reports julie out of your office okay to where we've got the information that we need in order to make a well-informed intelligent decision about how we go forward with this fes system That's it. So that would be in September.

Is that the only thing we would talk about? The only thing. Can you guarantee that you will not stray off course in that meeting, talk about anything else?

the need for the technology getting people online I've been through that too and we had to do exactly what you said it had to be implemented and people just had to use it that was it as a matter of fact as a contractor another scenario of that

Most of our people that were contractors of the Marshal Service were all retirees. Most of them were over 50. So what happened was, in order to get a security clearance, you had to use a system, electronic system. If you couldn't do it, guess what they said? See ya. And these people were starting out at $75,000 a year, and they were so ingrained that they couldn't do it, wouldn't do it, didn't want to do it. Well, they lost their job. But the point of that is you have to implement it and force people to use it. You just have to do that. If they don't want to do it, everybody's so afraid of somebody quitting here. And again, I reiterate, because I've been attacked on this before, cemeteries are full of irreplaceable people. So if they want to leave, leave. But, you know, if you get somebody in that's technologically advanced, then they're going to be a better employee anyway. So not disparaging anyone, putting anybody down. I agree with you. You just got to implement it and do it. You make it happen. You got to quit. We got to quit acquiescing to threats and just do it. That's my piece.

That's what I think it would be is a foundational piece to move the county forward. Plus the...

transition for the auditor's office it's just like a sort of natural fit but whatever okay so september is fes special session meeting october but we have some things that we need to get to that point for your fes for our fes meeting we have we have some thing that the committee it is give it to them

The job description review committee needs to get those job description changes to WIS because we need that.

An accurate count across the board, all employees, of how many employees we have in every job classification. And I'm going to go back, because you're on that committee, are you not? No. Gary, you're on that committee? Are you talking about WISG? Okay, well, here's my proposal for you. Because I've got the paperwork all over here, I can bring it out if you want. I would like to see WIS, they had, when they came out with the special occupations, when you read those special occupations, it appears as if it was for law enforcement. But I think we've used those special occupations for other people within the county departments.

Yeah, there's some emergency management.

Well, so what I'd like for WIS to do is expand that special occupations list. to define these other occupations that are classified as a special occupation. Does that make sense?

Yeah, kind of.

Okay, because if you've got somebody, and I'm making this up. Say that again, Jim. You lost me.

Okay.

There are like four or five categories. That's what Augustine wants them to be. Well, they need to be more specific. Well, whatever. Yeah, it's more specific.

That's fine.

Yeah, because I love the system. The system's cool. Because to me, what the system solves, all right, is the council every year has to do what, and I'm gonna use the term schedule. You have these 19 classifications, you got special occupations, and the council simply has to decide what the, with the goal of getting to 100% of the 50% external, right?

Is everybody in agreement on that?

No, 50% because they used what's called regression of the mean to calculate the 50% external based on these eight counties. So if we're at 100% of 50% external, and all these classifications of all they're all in alignment with that benchmark, then the reality is we have a very, very fair compensation system. And it takes away any employee. That was the whole goal. That's the whole goal, right. And furthermore, you're classifying the job description. So it doesn't matter who, you know, Susie Q, and I've got a crush on her, and she's hot, and I'm going to give her a stipend and make her a pay grade 19.

Or even points that have been made multiple times.

Yeah, yeah. The question was, you wanted the WIS to do something.

There's like four or five special occupations. Right. And we've taken those special applications, because if you look at the definition of a special application, it appears for it's basically law enforcement. That's how I interpreted it. But then we've used some of those special occupations for other positions within county government. And if we're going to use those, then let's make very clear the description of the special occupation. So you are a, for example, how do you classify the new job description for the new maintenance manager for Brown County that's going to operate within the commissioner's office? So because the challenge with these job classifications and job descriptions, you get into the definition of manager. Well, it's one thing to manage guys that are running zero turns to mow parks and rec, but it's different for a guy that's managing the ID department. There's a lot different level of responsibility, right? So I'm asking that we simply go in WIS, take, I don't know, for example, how many employees do we have in county government right now based on FES that have special occupation job classifications? And what departments are they? Don't care about the people. They care less about the people. So let's look at that, and we've got to look at that. Well, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter about the people. Wow. I don't understand what you're saying.

There's a more diplomatic way to speak.

Well, maybe so, but I'm having a rattle on the fly here, so it's, you know. All right. Got that.

We have a question.

So all chief deputies. So see, to me, there ought to be a category, separate category, that says, you know, because see, when I read chief deputy, I was thinking chief deputy law enforcement, not chief deputy... Chief deputy auditor, chief deputy...

That was the chief deputy. Were you the same?

Yeah, because that's how I think. Yeah, it's how I think, too.

Because the chief deputy is an appointed position by the elected official. Chief deputy.

Yeah, so if we could. And so let me ask you a question. There's a chief deputy for the chief deputy in Long for Sheriff's Department, right? Right. They're appointed as well. They may work there, but they're appointed. Do they make more money than a chief deputy in the auditor's office? Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, then shouldn't we have chief deputy?

They go by merit.

Stay with me, Julie. I don't think there's a separate special occupation specifically for departmental chief deputies. And it probably should be because their compensation is not going to be the same as a chief deputy in law enforcement.

Here's a list of special occupations as given to us by WIS. In the auditor's office, the clerk's office, the recorder's office, and the treasurer's office, it's the chief deputy. In court services, it's chief probation officer, probation officer, the adult probation officer, the juvenile probation officer, and the case manager probation officer. In prosecutor's office, it's the 4D deputy prosecutor. Public defender, it's the three public defender attorneys. health department, the health officer, jail, the jail commander, jail, the matron, and sheriff, the chief deputy.

Okay, now, are all those people making different salaries? Yes.

How did we arrive at those salaries?

That is a question for WIS.

Right, and that's what I don't understand. Yeah, because I need to understand how did we arrive at the salaries for all those different specialized occupations. Because where I'm at, right, and this is just speaking for myself, is that two-thirds of our employees are on the 19 different job classifications. excluding special occupations. My assumption is, is the special occupations are making more money than what the other 19 job classifications are.

Because they're special.

Because they're special, right. So what we as a board, you know, in September, in this meeting, we need to look at the cost of the special session people, look at the cost of the other 19 job classifications, and I want to true up those 19 job classifications to where it's been standardized, okay? Because right now, it's not. They're all different, and it's not. We need to true it up, okay?

But we should refer to them like chief deputy auditor or whatever. Chief deputy sheriff.

Chief deputy.

Okay, let's say that, let's go with me. If I am unable to do my job, up and does it.

Right. Now is that because you're intoxicated or what is it?

Maybe. Whatever reason. But in these meetings I think we should refer to that person as chief deputy auditor instead of just chief deputy. Chief deputy, right.

So to clarify. Yeah, I agree. Because they're all different. Jim, there were other positions that we exempted from that calculation. What do we do with those? From the, remember, your estimate on meeting the mean, we exempted like, was it 19 or 43 people?

48 people. We didn't exempt. We just didn't include it. The only thing, I didn't include it. And most of those were all special occupations. See, to me, let's take the special occupations out of it. And then, because we've got several employees that you've got some kind of formula for, to where they're a Pat B and they're only gonna get 50% of Pat B, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so what I think, whether we can afford it or not, I'll be honest with you, I'll be on the point of no return. Take the special lock out of it. And if you're categorized in those 19 occupations, we use that external midpoint and everybody is at 90% of the external midpoint after a 3%, 3%, 6% adjustment.

Throw them back in. I don't want to exempt anybody from any adjustments. Hold on. Because that puts us behind on something.

Yeah. Okay. Then fine. Then you do the 90% and you take the special occupations and you bump them 6%. Up to the FES equipment. See, I've not seen and I can't remember of whether or not the special occupations, those are annual salaries. The 19 are all hourly. But I don't remember seeing the 50% external on the special occupations. Maybe I'm wrong. I could be wrong. I don't know. But we can discuss this in September. We just need to have a very healthy conversation. Make sure we've got everything that we need to sit down and evaluate it and make a decision.

of comparable salaries.

And if we've added 600 grand in there, then we know that, okay, whatever. I just want to get it resolved.

My question is, is if the Compensation Committee of Judy, Scott, and I do all this, you're not going to vote for it because you're not there.

I want an open discussion on September. I don't want decisions made in a vacuum.

No, no, okay, so the PAC committee has this recommendation for this software pickup, and maybe you need to talk to the people, we'll give you their phone number, whatever. But I'm just saying, how's that going to work in terms of committees and stuff like that? And no big deals.

But what you could send to me is you guys could send me an email and say, here's the company, here's the software, because what I'll do is I will get on the phone and call them. That's what I just suggested to you. And I'll do my due diligence on the system so that I know with the capacity, because the... To me, the assistance, not that I'm not in favor of the direction that you're headed. I understand the need.

You just don't want to make an uneducated decision.

If we're going to spend that kind of money, it goes back to what he said. We're going to implement it, and you're going to use it, and if you don't use it, here's the consequences. And you are required to learn it. We'll provide the education, but you're going to have to shift. You're going to have to change because this is the new system. It's like, for example, we don't need to go in the weeds. The system's good, but I want us to document and have it typed up, kind of use an organizational chart, typed up, and then we have a meeting with all the department heads. Commissioners are involved in this, everybody's involved, and you say, hey, y'all need to get on the bus because here's where it's going. And if you don't want to get on the bus, then there's the door, and don't let it hit you in the rear end, okay? Period.

If you still want to submit paper time cards, here's the computer over there in the corner of the auditor's office that you can manually input all that into the system.

Right, because the technology is great. The technology is cool.

Because the auditor is not going to have an employee punching in numbers from a of the 20th century is gone.

You never get any flack from a new employee because they realize, oh, that's part of the job. Because they want the job.

What's next? Everybody in agreement? September, we're going to focus on FES. And then in October, we're going to dedicate that special session to this software. No, no, no. We may want to have the software.

You better talk early because The question is, there's a sort of a similar software, I can't remember what it's called again, but by Apex or whatever, similar thing that we may replace it with. So for one thing, if we buy the software, we'd probably save about $22,000.

Actually, it wasn't software.

It was steel.

We have a company named Steel that we work with right now. Steel Benefits? Yes. Well, we want to... seal and implement this. Oh.

So we'd save about $22,000 there towards this, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, so, but, and the issue is, is ComCom wants to come in and train us in-house, which is excellent, and the question is, wouldn't it be great to do it through open enrollment when we get into the nitty-gritty? Solve a lot of those issues.

I have a question. Once you start investigating, you're going to find out everything they do, and it's like, what the... That is going to make us so efficient.

Well, if everybody, if we roll it out right.

Because I've got a question. Oh, I need clarification. Comp time. If I'm a Brown County employee and I work overtime, I get paid for my overtime, right? But is comp time to where if I work overtime, I can take the comp time and I get extra days off?

Within the same pay period.

I don't understand comp time.

In lieu of getting paid, you get time off. Some places, comp time goes like overtime. Comp time is given to you. Say you worked over an hour, you get an hour and a half comp time. I don't know how it is here. I think we do that, don't we? What is comp time? Compensation time.

So let's say I work Monday through Friday, work 40 hours a week, and I got one week because I have to work 50 hours.

then you have 15 hours of comp time that you can take off the next week.

You get time and a half. But I get paid by taking that off though. Yeah, you get paid.

You're not there. It's like vacation time.

Yeah, it's like paid vacation. That's what it is. But you're getting it at time and a half. Because I have a choice. If I work 10 hours more and I make $50 an hour, then I can get my $500 that I get time and a half. So I'm going to get my 10 hours of overtime and that's going to be in my paycheck.

You can't do that on your own. Your supervisor has to say We need you here for this. Right, right. You can't just decide you're going to do comp time.

Right, or overtime.

Yeah, or overtime.

Right, okay. But I have a choice to where I can get paid... Okay, or I can take some paid days off.

Not in everybody's office, like my office.

Is that written down, Julie?

There's no overtime. It's being revised into the personnel manual. It is, isn't it? Yeah, that's part of it.

Because when I retired, I had so much comp time. I left like January 2nd.

I went all the way until May because I had that much comp time build up. We're not going to allow it to go extensively. Is that all written down somewhere how they do that?

Currently, our policy book says 100 hours of comp time.

Used by when? Yeah, used by when? Used by a certain time?

Yeah, it's going to be used by the end of the year.

So it's a use it or lose it?

That's like two weeks vacation extra. Well, but you're working. They're getting something out of that.

No, I'm off and getting paid. Comp time is where I get, because, okay, well.

Well, forgive vacation. Comp time is that, compensation time.

No, but you get, if my manager, you're my manager, and you say, hey, Kemp, we got this workload. I need you to stay late. So I come in at 8, and I don't leave until 8. So I'm working, you know, four hours extra a day, right? So four times five would be 20 hours, all right? And you approve it. Okay, well, then you can pay, I can get my, I can get that 20 hours in time and a half and take the money.

Because you have 20 in time and a half.

If you've got the money in your budget to cover the overtime. If they work over and they get to home, they usually use it for their doctor's appointments or any kind of appointment they have. So that leaves them where they don't have to use their sick plan.

So let me ask you a question, Julie Reeves. If you don't have a line item in your budget for $20,000 for overtime, so you don't have any money to pay overtime, but you can use comp time. Oh. So basically what you do is you go, well, you can work an extra five hours this week, but I tell you what, next week you're only going to work 35, but I'm going to pay you for the 40.

That's correct. And that's common practice, just so you know that. That is common practice in business. Common practice.

Especially in government. Not in my business, because if I don't work, I don't get paid, okay? But you're not government. Yes.

Now that clears it up for me. Got it.

Because the system you're talking about implementing... will track cop time. And we can't track that currently. That's correct.

They'll track everything, including the pentadoc. They'll still understand how their benefits are. I support the concept.

I think about the cop time we've paid.

I support the concept. And I'm going into this because I don't want to hear anything about it's going to save us any money. Because to me, it's a cost of doing business. Correct. Period. And we're going to do business the correct way. Correct. And we're going to be squeaky clean, very organized with everything that we do. But everybody has to buy in. You either use it or you get hit the door.

And if it saves money, that's a bonus.

Correct. If it does. I would rather go into it. It's a cost of business. It's a cost of doing business.

But if it saves us something, hey, fine. Bonus. Yeah.

But if it keeps everyone honest, that could go a long way in helping our culture, morale, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think. Next. Joe, what do you have for us?

Unbelievable.

If I ran a business like this, I'd have been out of business in two weeks. Thank you very much. That's government.

That's common, too.

Can't make a decision, can we? Unbelievable. Committee. Government by committee. It's the worst thing to do.

We're taking your comp time, buddy. This place is like a business. No, it's not like a business. It's like a business park that has the auditor incorporated, has assessor incorporated, has recorder incorporated, because none of them are under the umbrella of the corporate leadership. No.

He's got to go. Nothing else to say. I mean, that was it. We covered three big things, right?

Does the job description committee, I can't remember what we called the committee.

Maintenance committee. Compensation committee.

No, you guys were way in the middle.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Hold on. Do you guys have all the proposed jobs? All right, then shut the hell up. Do you guys have all of the job description submission changes?

Don't they come in to you? Do you have all of them?

I have several. I sent all of them to you.

How many more do we need?

I've got two on my desk. But they don't want any compensation money. They've already got the money.

They just want their description outdated. Right. Right. We've got to work all that out.

Because your committee, your committee, and you correct me if I'm wrong, this is the reason I keep starting to be complaining all the time. Really? Well, we don't put anything in writing. I know. Well, that's a problem. We don't put anything in writing. Okay, so if you're going to have a committee, right? And the committee, I thought, was the sole purpose, the process that I think, because we never put it in writing. We haven't in writing. Darren, we implemented what was in writing. Darren, when Lori Sheelan was here, I believe we made an agreement that from January 1 to March 31, the first quarter of each and every year, the departments have an open window to submit job descriptions for any editing that goes on within those job descriptions. That those job descriptions would come before the three-member committee. the three-member committee then would evaluate, perhaps interview, the department head to look at the validity of the claim that the department head's making about the job description. If the three-member committee made a decision that the claim is valid, then that job description is shipped off to WIS for them to review and accurately classify that job description.

And didn't you miss bringing it to the council?

The two that I'm talking about, they were switched. Some of their job descriptions were switched. Kim got some of the job descriptions from HR she shouldn't have had. And Teresa got some of the jobs from HR she shouldn't have had. They were switched. So now they've got new job descriptions switching them back to where they're supposed to be.

And so the classification stays the same? Yes. Well, that's no big deal. Jim, but back to your point.

Before we send it to WIS and start the paycheck rolling, it's got to come to the full council and then go to WIS. Okay, that's fair. We don't want to see a surprise.

So the committee then comes before the full council body, makes the presentation and the recommendation, and the council makes the decision to forward it to WIS because that will rack up more.

Anything that is an additional expense should come before this full council. Fair.

The committee can't make a decision because they're not a quorum of the council. Scott, Darren, what we just rattled off, it ain't in writing anywhere. Because that's a policy issue.

It's developing. We'll do it.

We don't have a policy. Clarity, specific. Because the other thing, too, is that actually needs to go out to the department heads, this policy, so they're very clear about the process. Because I think what we agreed to in that meeting was you got the first quarter You submit it, second quarter, then it goes, and the job gets reclassified, and then we make the decision, and boom, it's done. Because that way it's done by July 1, which is budget time, right? But you do not arbitrarily in the fourth quarter of the year come back in and go, hey, Betty Lou, we've got to rewrite her job description. We want her to go from a Pat A to a Pat C. Uh-uh. Okay, no, no, no, no, no, no. Your line item's already been funded. You don't get to do that. Because my concern with this going forward, if we don't implement this the right way, we run the risk of people wanting to game the system and changing job descriptions so they get better classifications so they get higher pay. And now we're right back to... I'm a paid grade 9, and I should be a paid grade 16, and this person's a paid grade 14, and that's not fair because they got this stipend, and you're right back to where we were. And if you remember, that was the whole purpose of us. Yeah, we got rid of all that. Well, you better be careful going forward because this new system, you could game it. They're using the game. Because I want to be an executive B. That's the top gig. So I'm putting it in my job description where I'm like, I'm the smartest guy in the Brown County government, so I'm an executive B. I think you're a BSA. It's a D-S-A-N-A. I'm out of here, guys. Have a good weekend.

Thanks for coming. Yeah, I'm welcome. That's what we approved that we had been writing.

Job Classification and Compensation Committee. Does this address the committee specifically?

Yes, the maintenance plan.

Yeah, but that's the contract from WIS. Yeah. I'm not talking about the contract from WIS. I'm talking about our policy, documented policy for our three-member committee.

Brown County Job Classification and Compensation Committee.

Okay. Have you got an air pump? No. Yeah. Because I let the air out of your tires.

You trying to keep them here? You should be putting air in the tires. No, just enough to get him out of the driveway. Do we give you cop time for this, Jim? Yeah. Okay. Time and a half? Straight time. That's good. That's good. Just enough to get him onto the hill. Yeah. Okay. He's a ghost. Yeah.

Yeah.

Where are we on getting the spreadsheet filled out?

Well, that's what I'm doing right now.

That's what I've been doing. I'm glad we've been sitting here.

How close are we? Because that's one reason I told Jerry not to be here today because they don't have the update. It would be pointless for him to be here today.

Joel, do you have words of wisdom before we end this? We didn't get that email, so.

Well said.

I can sit here and change the changes. We didn't really change a lot.

No, we didn't.

So it would be quicker if I just sent you the list of where it's at and what it is.

Okay. But then they're going to actually manually do that on their spreadsheet.

Yeah.

So we're going to hold off on defining some of the issues such as, let's say, law enforcement with the longevity and or the school resource officer additional one, blah, blah, blah. That's going to happen later.

We have the second SRO in the budget, don't we?

What's SRO?

School resource officer.

Oh, okay.

But I mean, in terms of

It's in his budget, so we're going to advertise that. Okay. And then we can discuss it.

Fine. I just want to know when it's going.

Okay, so I put the 6% on everybody or not on everybody?

Everybody. Everybody, yeah. That's right.

Everybody, everybody.

Don't we get our, what's that mean? Quotient, what quotient they call it? Ah, not always. Is it six this year? No, it's six this year. Is it a four?

Yeah. Or a six? Six. Wow, it's usually four. I haven't seen that yet. Is that right, Julie? It came out a month or so ago. Okay, yeah.

Well, that's a lot. That portion is six percent.

It's a lot. It was eight last year. What? It was eight last year. No. It was four. It wasn't. I remember eight. For us, yes.

Yeah.

But six this year. For us? That's quite a bit. What is that? That's, yeah.

That's quite a bit.

All right, well. We got anything else? We're very efficient. We finished early. I think I need to run, but yeah.

You can walk.

What, the contractual?

Mm-hmm.

Or no. Jim's not here, and he'll be blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't know. I mean, when would that go into effect?

It's not really.

Would it go into effect next, the first of the year? No idea what you're talking about. It's a potential thing that's being explored. We might have to just wait then to see what develops. All right, I move to adjourn if we're left with nothing else.

Okay, second.

Mr. Presidente, they're adjourning on you.

I haven't asked for a vote yet. Anybody else have a vote?

Joe, that'll knock all year, but he's holding it in. Oh, yeah. He's just saving it up.

For his last meeting. Don't you worry.

He's saving it up for his last meeting. That's right.

He's going to tell us what he thinks all of us. No, no.

Then he's going to put it all together, and we're going to say, wow. He's going to hand us a written document.

Yeah. That's right.

Hey.

Oh, good.

We're done.

We're done.

I didn't know it was starting now.

Got to go to work, Darren.

You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go paint boots.